Answers Of The Heart
by HiddenSpirals
Summary: Inspired at a young age by the Sandaime Hokage, Naruto searches for his own reasons to take on the title of Hokage. Will he be able to change the ninja world, or will he be crushed along the way? Only time will tell. Ch.1 revised, currently rewriting ch. 2-5. Stronger/Smarter Naruto.
1. A new fire born (revised)

Hey guys, I know its been a while since I've updated and honestly, I should have left this story dead with the amount of time that I have spent away from it. The only reason that I decided to come back and work on it again is because I'm not happy with where I left off on it and I hated leaving it unfinished. So I plan on editing the chapters that I have out already and continuing the story from there. I don't really have set times that I plan on updating, but I am going to be trying to get chapters out as often as I possibly can in between my normal schedule.

Anyways, I definitely plan on continuing this story especially for those of you who really liked it and while the first 5 updates will be fixing the things that I don't like about my story, the rest of the updates will be continuing from where we left off at.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, I do however, own a headband so I could be a ninja if I wanted to. Anyways on to the story.

Answers Of The Heart

What is the will of fire?

Some will tell you that it is the belief that all of Konohagakure is one family unit. All of the shinobi that share in this belief will lay down their lives for the prosperity of the village and their families.

Others will say that the Hokage is the embodiment of the will of fire. The Shodai Hokage, Senju Hashirama co-founded Konoha to end the fighting and deaths of children, The Nidaime Hokage, Senju Tobirama created the ninja academy and many laws to ensure the survival of Konoha and the yondaime, Namikaze Minato sacrificed himself to seal the kyuubi to ensure his villages safety.

While these definitions might satisfy the hearts of many in the village of Konohagakure, with time, one child will grow to find his own meaning and absolutely change the elemental nations forever. This is his story; one of hardships and challenges. The tale of a legend in the making.

It all started with a question, one that would shake the foundation of the Shinobi world forever.

"Do you know what the will of fire is?" An old man asked the child of seven years sitting next to him on top of the Hokage Monument.

"Ugh, this question again jiji?! Why do you always ask me this?" The boy grew an agitated look on his face "You never even tell me what it is when I tell you that I don't know."

The old man looked at his younger companion, he could see the irritation in his blue eyes and how his whiskered face was slumped with a slight frown. The old man could easily hide his amusement but even so, he still had to smile at the way the blonde child next to him was reacting.

Since Uzumaki Naruto had first told him that he wanted to follow in his footsteps the man had consistently asked him about the will of fire, patiently waiting for the day that Naruto would give some kind of correct answer. The boy wanted to take over his position as the Hokage and honestly, Sarutobi Hiruzen hoped that Naruto could be the one he passed the hat off to. Without even knowing it, even at the age of seven the boy was a shining example of the will of fire.

You could say that Naruto was something like a pariah. He was constantly being ridiculed by the village, called names such as demon brat, murderer and freak and yet, instead of retaliating back, he would still try and help others around the village without expecting anything in return. Others in the village refused to see it, but Hiruzen could see how much Naruto cared about the village. He could see the passion and the care in Naruto's eyes, even the pain and sorrow after being constantly rejected by the villagers. But most of all, he could see the determination to not give up. Lesser men couldn't handle a piece of what Naruto endured and yet, it was easy to say that Naruto would be there for his village no matter what! Even if he wasn't wanted.

"Hey Jiji, if you can't tell me then can you give me a hint?"

"I suppose I could. Look out at the village Naruto-kun," the Hokage gestured down towards the village that they were sitting above "tell me, what do you see?"

Naruto looked down at the village and at first, he noticed the trees and the buildings, all of which had a golden tone because of the setting sun. While it was an amazing sight, the boy didn't think that his Jiji had that in mind when he asked the question.

Taking another inspection, the blonde boy noticed the villagers, small as ants because of the distance, moving throughout the village, most likely heading home to spend the rest of their night. "I see the villagers Jiji, why?" The blonde answered, not understanding why he was asked the question.

Nodding his head, the Hokage then said, "Now let me ask you this," The Hokage turned to face Naruto as a light breeze ruffled the robes at his back elegantly "What do the shinobi provide for the people of this village?"

Naruto thought about it for a second, he didn't want to sound stupid in front of the man he looked up to the most. "Well I guess they keep the people safe. In your stories, you've told me about bad people in and outside of the village. The shinobi protect the village from all of the bad stuff, right?" Naruto was getting nervous at the way that his Jiji was staring at him, hoping that he didn't answer the question wrong.

Slowly, an appreciative smile cracked on the old man's face and he responded, "Very good Naruto! You are indeed correct. The Shinobi are responsible for the safety of the village. If you ever want me to consider making you the next hokage then you must continue to love your village, you must do everything in your power to protect its people, even the ones that don't treat you right. I want you to be the strongest and the smartest that you can be. Do you know what the most important part about being Hokage is?"

Naruto was listening carefully, why would he ever turn down free advice to become the Hokage. Especially if the advice just so happened to come from one. But even still he could not stop himself from his childish response, "Oh oh, is the most important thing about being the Hokage to be recognized by everyone as the greatest? Or maybe it's having a super cool and powerful jutsu!" The boy answered passionately. With a second thought he added, "Because if it is then I'm going to get everyone to remember my name, Dattebayo!"

Hiruzen couldn't stop himself from laughing in amusement at the very naïve answer. 'Hah, Naruto-kun reminds me of Hashirama-sensei, I have to remember that he's a little on the slow side.'

"Hey! Are you laughing at me, Jiji!?"

"No Naruto-kun, you just remind me of someone from my childhood. But to answer the question, no, the most important thing isn't being recognized by everyone or even having powerful jutsu." He was stopped for a second by a whine "The most important thing about being the hokage is to find something you love about the village. You need to build friendships with the people of the village and fight for those friendships."

The old man stopped his rant for just a second to collect his thoughts, this subject was one of great importance to him.

"The will of fire is the want no, the very need to protect the village from anything even if it means that you have to lay your life on the line. There are no short cuts to becoming the Hokage, you will have to train as hard as you can and you will have to learn a lot. You would be the ultimate guardian of this village which means that you are responsible for everything that happens, good or bad. Do you think you can do that?" Hiruzen finished what he had to say with a passion coming from his heart. He didn't want to break the kids dreams by telling him all of this. He did however have an idea but, for it to work, Naruto would still have to strive for his position even after knowing what he would be in for.

The blonde sat there for a while, digesting the information that he just received. Honestly, it scared him that he would be responsible for so much, but he was Uzumaki Naruto and a little bit of responsibility wasn't going to scare him away!

After collecting his thoughts, Naruto gained a look in his eyes that matched the fire in his heart. He was going to be the best no matter what. "You bet I can handle it Dattebayo! Just you wait, I'm going to be the best Hokage this village has ever seen. I'm going to make you and this village proud of me and I'm going to be the strongest ninja ever!"

"I already am proud of you my boy and your parents would be to," The Hokage muttered to himself.

The blonde didn't hear what his idol said, "What did you say Jiji?"

Thinking quick on his feet the old man said, "Good, now I have enrolled you into the ninja academy so that you can start on your path to recognizing your dream. The academy starts in one month so until then, I suggest you start preparing for the curriculum. I suppose I could also teach you a thing or two as well. After all, I can't have my successor be unprepared." The Hokage finished with a grin on his aged face.

"What!? Really! That's awesome Jiji, I'm going to be so amazing!" Naruto had stars in his eyes and a smile so big that Hiruzen thought his face might split in half. "So, when can we start Jiji?"

"We can start tomorrow. I want you to meet me at the Hokage tower tomorrow morning so that we can get started. However, I also want you to keep this a secret Naruto. Nobody is allowed to know that I am teaching you." The man had a very strong tone to his voice because of how important this was.

"Aww, why not Jiji?"

Hiruzen couldn't tell him the real reason because it had to do with the kyuubi hiding in Naruto's gut and the political repercussions, so instead he gave another reason that wasn't necessarily wrong. "Because as the Hokage I am not supposed to take any students. It wouldn't be fair to other possible students. You have to keep it a secret or you might never become a ninja. Do you understand?"

Naruto nodded his head back at his new sensei. He might have been sad that he couldn't yell out to the world that his sensei was THE Hokage but he didn't want to lose his shot at gaining his dreams. He was going to give his all and make sure that he learned everything that he could from his sensei.

"I believe that you should start heading home Naruto-kun. It is getting late and you need to be getting your sleep because tomorrow will be a long day for you."

Standing up, the blonde said, "Okay Jiji, I'll see you tomorrow." With that Naruto started walking home.

As he walked away, Hiruzen noticed that his clothes were starting to get ragged. He could see holes and tears in his shirt. 'Maybe tomorrow I should take him to get some new clothes.' Finished with his thoughts, it was time to get himself to bed as well.

The next day

Naruto had just gotten out of bed and he was excited. 'Today is the day that I begin my ninja training. I'm going to be the best in no time!" He quickly took off his pajamas and put on his tan shorts and his white shirt that sported the symbol of Konoha. After a quick breakfast of cereal and a cup of ramen, he slid on his sandals and left his apartment to go to the tower for his first training session.

On his way to the tower he noticed just how nice the day was. The sun was out, shining brightly. He could hear a couple birds singing their melodies and feel the warm breeze from the wind. Naruto looked around and could see that the villagers that noticed him were keeping a wide birth while anyone that didn't see him were carrying on with their lives. With a tightening of his fist, he vowed to himself that he would gain the strength to protect these people whether they wanted him to or not.

As he was passing through a market district, a woman that he assumed was carrying groceries, tripped on a rock and fell along with her produce. While most of the people who were shopping in the market place continued on without a second thought to the unfortunate woman, Naruto decided to stop and help her gather her belongings.

Upon grabbing a couple bags of produce to return to the woman, she looked at him, instantly understanding who he was, "Hey! Get away from my groceries you thieving monster!" The woman shouted, instantly gathering the attention of the markets patrons, who had previously ignored the woman.

"B-but I…" Naruto tried to say before he was rudely cut off by the woman, "You were going to steal my groceries, but I caught you! Set them down and leave, or else."

The blonde boy of seven years sighed before setting the bags down in front of the woman, "Here, I was just trying to help you." The boy said as he continued his trip to the Hokage's tower, clearly upset.

He didn't do anything except for attempting to be helpful and yet, the woman pushed him away with disgust. He could even hear the bystanders speaking in hushed voices about the occurrence. This kind of thing always happened to him where ever he went in the village and it really upset him. The only thing that brightened his mood back up was the fact that his Jiji would be starting his training today and that the old man had faith that Naruto could overcome his hardships and be better for it. After all, the harder the challenge, the sweeter the reward!

10 minutes later

Finally, he made his way in front of the tower that his ninja training would start in. Stepping in, he told the secretary that he was here to see the hokage. "Give me a minute to let Hokage-sama know that you are here." The lady said to him and he was pleasantly surprised when she didn't even glare at him or say anything mean.

Walking back moments later, the lady said, "Alright Naruto, Hokage-sama is ready for you. You may go in to see him now."

With a 'thank you' Naruto walked down the hall towards the office of the village's leader and stepped in through the door.

Upon stepping in, Naruto saw the very man he was looking for in all of his old glory sitting behind a desk doing paperwork. "Hey jiji, I'm ready for the day!"

Looking up, the old paper pusher responded back, "Ah Naruto, just the person that I wanted to see-"the Kage put on the ceremonial hat that was sitting on his desk and grabbed a scroll that was sitting under it before he stood up "now follow me. Let's go on a walk."

"Um, Okay?" The boy was confused, he thought that he was going to start on his training. So, with confusion clear on his face, Naruto followed after his Jiji.

An hour later

Naruto found himself standing on an isolated training ground away from the village. Before going to the training grounds, the Hokage had taken him to lunch as a small detour. "Now Naruto-kun, this will be where we train every day for the next month until you start at the academy. Every morning when you wake up I want you to come straight here so that we can begin. Do you have any questions?"

"Yeah, so what are we going to start on? I bet your going to teach me something cool like breathing fire or blowing stuff up!" The blonde student was so excited that Hiruzen thought that he might explode or even spontaneously combust. 'The kid needs a chill pill.' He thought to himself with a sweat drop.

"Calm down Naruto. We must learn the basics first. Now before we start I have a couple of rules that I need to go over with you."

"Huh? Why do we need rules?"

"The rules are important. You have to follow all of them or I will not teach you and I will not allow you to become a ninja. Now there will be three rules that you must follow. Rule number one, like I previously said, you are not allowed to tell anyone I am teaching you unless I tell you beforehand that it is alright." The old man unraveled the scroll that he brought from his office and released a couple of scrolls from it. "Because of the fact that it cannot be known that I am teaching you, part of the lessons that I will give you this month will be about stealth. Two of these books are about being stealthy and keeping secrets and I want you to read them…" He was cut off by a groan but he continued before his young student could speak. "Don't whine about the scrolls. I expect you to read them and I will test you on them. Anyways, rule number two, there are ten different scrolls here. I expect you to read each one, to be a ninja you must be smart. Knowledge is more important than any jutsu. Some of the scrolls will be on history, others will be about chakra theory. I have marked the scrolls from one to ten in the order that I want you to read them. The final rule is that you will follow anything that I tell you to do without question or I will punish you."

He knew it would be a lot to take in at first for Naruto but he wanted to lay down the law in the beginning. Hiruzen was willing to take Naruto as far as he could go but he would have to work for it and Hiruzen was expecting perfection.

"I'll do it dattebayo! I'm going to follow all of your rules and get super strong. Can we get started now!?"

"Of course, let me go over what we will be learning over the month and then we can get you started. Now please sit down." Naruto made a great showcase of a fish on land as he basically flopped on the ground in his excitement.

"Over the course of the month I will be helping you start on your taijutsu training and unlocking your chakra. We will also work on some basics such as throwing shuriken, chakra control exercises and stealth training. If you impress me with your skills and your academics then I might teach you a couple of jutsu."

The blonde ball of energy shot up to his feet with a fist in the air "Im going to master everything and make you teach me all of your jutsu. You hear me Jiji, I'm going to be the best dattebayo!"

The Sandaime Hokage had a glint in his eye after hearing Naruto's proclamation "Let's see how much you can take Naruto."

Six hours later

Naruto's seven-year-old body couldn't take anymore, his arms and legs felt like lead and they burned with exertion. His sensei started the training by making Naruto run laps around the training field. After he was done, he had to stretch and start doing pushups and when he could no longer do those he had to start doing the basic katas for a taijutsu style. That wouldn't be so bad but, his sensei forced him to hold each stance and go over them repeatedly to build muscle memory.

"Good job Naruto, you can take a break." Naruto sighed in relief as he dropped the stance he was currently in. "Come here. We are going to start learning about chakra."

The monkey summoner waited for his young charge to come over and sit in front of him before he began, "Do you know anything about chakra, Naruto-kun?"

The Uzumaki thought about it for a second before he responded, "Is it some kind of snack? Cause I'm hungry now." Hiruzen's first response was to face palm however he managed to hold himself in check. Barely.

"No Naruto, it is not a snack. We are almost done for the day then I will treat you to dinner. Chakra is the manifestation of our physical and spiritual energies mixed together. With chakra, ninja can use jutsu, move faster or even hit harder. I'm not going to worry about teaching you the theory behind it, I want you to read the scroll on chakra tonight. I will however teach you how to use your chakra. Now first sit down in a position like this." Hiruzen sat down with his legs crossed in front of him in a meditative position. "Then make the ram handsign like me. This handsign will help you pull on your chakra until you get used to it. Now close your eyes and dig down inside of you and find your chakra. It should feel warm."

Naruto did as he was told and started digging down to find his chakra. After twenty minutes, he finally found it and started to pull on it. What happened next completely caught Hiruzen off guard. HIruzen was not by any means a sensor however the amount of chakra that Naruto pulled out was absolutely massive especially considering it was his first time drawing it out. 'If this is the amount that he can draw on for his first time then the years to come will be very interesting. The amount that he pulled on is comparable to some of the jounin in the village, his control is bound to be terrible for a long time.'

"Excellent job Naruto! I'm going to take you to get ramen as a treat."

"Yata! Here I come Ichiraku's, give me all the ramen." Naruto had a scary glint in his eye, Hiruzen thought that he might have to get a loan with the amount of ramen that was about to be consumed.

'What kind of monster have I created.' Hiruzen thought with tears in his eyes as he was dragged by his blonde student.

Thirty minutes later

Hiruzen's eye was twitching, how did Naruto finish off twenty large bowls of ramen. It just didn't make any sense. If Orochimaru didn't defect from the village then he would have been hired study Naruto and find out how it was even possible.

'Slurp, slurp.' "Ahhh, that hit the spot. Is something wrong Jiji?" Naruto asked after finishing his twentieth bowl of ramen.

"What!? I wasn't thinking about hiring a missing nin to figure out one of the mysteries of the universe!" The old man said a little too quickly.

"Um okay? Well, I'm going to head home Jiji. I'll see you tomorrow." The blonde stood up and gave his Jiji a hug. Right before he was going to leave, Hiruzen whispered to him so no one would hear, "Make sure you study from the scrolls tonight. And also practice pulling on your chakra until you don't need the ram sign." Naruto nodded and said 'Goodbye' before he left.

'That boy is going to be quite the shinobi when he is older, I'm excited to see what he makes of himself." With that thought, Hiruzen payed for their meal before heading home for himself.

Meanwhile in the Hokage's office

"This sucks, why can't my real self stay here while I go help Naruto-kun with his training. I'm going to show him." The old man pouted to himself before he burst in a puff of smoke, leaving his creator with a massive headache.

End chapter

AN: I'm a little late on the Naruto fanfic train, you see I was on my computer writing this when I pulled up a video, the video had a black cat and a broken mirror in it and so I had to stop writing this or else I would have had bad luck for 7 years. Turns out that even without working on this that I ended up with bad luck anyways. Oh well. But in all seriousness, I've had this idea for a story for about a year now and I've finally decided to write it.

Revised: Now I'm really late on the Naruto Fanfiction train, hopefully somebody will read it… Anyway, this is the first chapter's revision, I'll be working on the new and improved ch. 2 tomorrow and hopefully get that out quickly. Once I have all five chapters redone, we will be getting into some new stuff. Let me know how this is, until then see ya next time!


	2. Student and teacher

Disclaimer: I unfortunately don't own Naruto, It's as simple as that.

An: Important note, I plan to upload about 2 to 3 times a week for Answers of the Heart. Sometimes depending on how work and life goes, I will be able to get out even more chapters a week. Anyways on with the story.

Answers Of The Heart

He made it, he really did! The month was finally over and he was finally use to the torture that was forced on him. To think that the crazy old man would make him actually eat vegetables. Even if he was starting to get used to the greens, it still made him cringe to eat them. In all seriousness though, the training that Hiruzen pushed onto Naruto really was yielding results. In the span of one month, Naruto had managed to pull on his chakra without the need of the ram handsign. He also had to say that he felt a lot stronger, practicing the taijutsu forms really helped to create a strong foundation and build on his stamina.

His Jiji may have been hard on him but he kept his word about teaching him some jutsu. One of the jutsu that he learned was called the henge no jutsu (transformation jutsu). The interesting thing about his henge was that instead of making an illusion like most people, they discovered that whatever he turned into was actually solid and had the mass of the original object. The prankster in him saw the value of such a technique. Especially after the conversation that he had with his Jiji a week ago.

Flashback

"I did it Jiji, I can do the henge now! Can you teach me the other jutsu that you promised me now?" Naruto was so excited for his accomplishment and felt that he was ready for the next technique. However, he was about to receive a valuable lesson from his sensei.

"If I told you that you had to fight against a ninja but you would get to choose your opponent, who would you choose. A ninja who only knows ten jutsu or a ninja that knows one hundred?" Hiruzen asked his young charge

Naruto raised an eyebrow in confusion by the question but he answered anyways, "I guess… I would choose the opponent with ten jutsu."

"Why?" was the only thing that Hiruzen responded with.

"Well because he only knows ten jutsu. That means that he has less techniques that he could hit me with."

The Hokage was about to make a very important point to his student and he had a smile on his face to show that he knew it. "What if I told you that because of the choice that you made that you are now dead."

"What!?" It didn't make sense to Naruto why would he die because he chose the guy with the less amount of jutsu. "Why would I die."

"Think of it like this. Let's pretend that these two ninjas have the same experience, have gone on the same missions and are around the same skill level. The one with hundreds of jutsu, learns them just because he can. As a result, he hasn't mastered any of them, he doesn't know all of the ways that the jutsu can be used. Meanwhile, the ninja with ten techniques has completely mastered all of his jutsu. He knows every single way that each one can be used. He even doesn't need to use handsigns for his jutsu because he knows how to use them perfectly. Who sounds like a scarier opponent to you?"

Naruto replayed the explanation in his head, the reasons that his Jiji used made perfect sense to him. "So, your saying that before I learn the next technique, I have to master the henge?"

The Sandaime was happy that his pupil understood what he was explained to him. "Not necessarily, I will still give you the other jutsu but, I want you to master the henge. Get it to the point that you don't even have to think about it in order to use it, I want to be able to see you use each jutsu that you learn in a way that no one else would ever think of." Hiruzen planned to train Naruto in such a way that no one would ever be able to counter him. He was going to make a monster of a shinobi out of him.

"Alright Jiji, I promise that I'm going to master every single jutsu that I learn and I'm going to surprise you with every single one. And I won't break my promise, dattebayo!"

Smiling, the old man said, "Good now get back to training. Tomorrow I will still be teaching you the next jutsu."

"Yata!" Naruto yelled out at the fact he would be getting another technique.

End flashback

For the rest of the week, Naruto's main focus was on mastering his two new jutsu. He was making outstanding progress on the henge but his other jutsu was proving to be a major problem to learn. Yesterday, Hokage-Jiji gave him an exercise to complete in order for him to control the jutsu better. He was excited about his two jutsu but that didn't override the sadness that he was feeling. He was sad because today would mark his last day of regularly training with Jiji. Tomorrow marks his first day in the academy.

He was broken from his thoughts when the previously mentioned old fart snuck up behind him and proceeded to scare the shit out of him. "Ahhhhhh! What the hell Jiji!? What was that for?" The nerve of some people! Did he really have to do that?

With a satisfied look, Hiruzen said, "You should have been paying attention to your surroundings, I could have killed you if I wanted to. Do we need to play the kunai game again today?"

It took Naruto everything he had to suppress the shiver that he was feeling. During the stealth portion of his training, Jiji created that stupid game and used it as a way to make Naruto constantly keep an eye on his surroundings. The game basically consisted of Jiji sneaking around through the trees and throwing kunai at Naruto. He wasn't allowed to leave the clearing in the middle of the trees. As Naruto got better at the game he wasn't allowed to dodge anymore, the only ways he could defend himself was to either deflect the kunai with his own or to snatch them out of the air.

"Nope nobody needs to play that game today." He sure as hell didn't want to play it, unless he was the one throwing the kunai. "So, what are we going to do today Jiji?"

"Today I figured that I would go over some things with you about the academy and also go over our new training schedule while your attending the academy. After we are finished, I'm leaving the rest of the day to you."

"Okay. What's going to happen now that I'm in the academy?" Naruto was naturally curious after all his entire schedule was about to change.

"Let's start with your academics. You have done well in learning from the scrolls that I gave you and I will be continuing to give you more scrolls to read. You will be receiving one to five scrolls per week to go over and memorize depending on their length. This week I will be giving you one big scroll. The scroll is a study on psychology, otherwise known as the study of the human mind."

Naruto was confused that he would be getting a scroll about the human mind of all things. He could somewhat understand the application for such information but, it would be more useful for him when he is closer to being a genin. "Why give me a scroll on Psychology now? Wouldn't it make more sense to give it to me when I'm closer to graduation?"

"You are indeed correct Naruto-kun. Don't worry about that for now, I will explain my reasoning shortly. Until then, keep listening. Anyways, I will still be testing you on the scrolls however, a lot of the stuff that I already taught you will be retaught to you at the academy. The academy will be going over taijutsu, shuriken-jutsu and three different ninjutsu; the henge (transformation) which you know already, the bunshin (clone) and the kawarimi (replacement). This will all be very easy for you to do but, I want you to purposely do bad at everything. I want you to make everyone think you're the dead last."

"What!? Why would I do that? I want to be the best!" Naruto really wanted to do his best to show his sensei that he wasn't wasting time on him.

The old man was expecting this reaction. "I understand but, there are two reasons I need you to do this. First, I need you to hide your abilities from everyone because if people see the skills that you have then they will start to question where you are getting them from. As a result, it would be much harder to avoid being caught. You will be allowed to slowly show better skills over time but, you should keep a lot of things secret. Now before I explain the next reason, do you remember when I told you how the mission rank system works?"

Naruto nodded he did remember, "Yeah missions are categorized by how difficult or secretive they are. They start at D-rank and can go as high a S-rank. Why?" Naruto wondered why this particular subject was brought up.

"The second reason is because I have an unofficial S-rank mission for you due to how secretive this is."

"What!?" Naruto yelled out for what felt like the millionth time that day "Why would you have an S-rank mission for me. I'm not even a ninja!"

Hiruzen had to take a second to enjoy the look of disbelief on the blonde's face. 'Damn, I wish I brought a camera.' "Yes, an S-rank mission. Here are the details that you need to know for the mission. There are going to be heirs from seven of the major ninja clans in your class. I have a feeling that your generation has the ability to far surpass all other generations before you. Some of the clan heirs have personal issues that may hinder their learning. This is where that scroll on psychology will come in handy, I want you to find out how to motivate your fellow students and convince them to grow stronger whether they want to or not. I want you to play as the worst student and slowly show the skills that you have because I have a feeling that some of the students will only work harder if you threaten to take their spot in the hierarchy of the class. This is a tall order, it's going to be very difficult but, I have complete faith in your ability to handle this task."

"Why would this be an S-rank? All you're technically having me do is motivate my future class mates. That really doesn't sound like a high ranking or top-secret mission."

"Good observation Naruto. You are correct, at first glance this doesn't seem like such an important job and it really isn't. The S-rank part of the mission has to do with one of the students that will be in your class."

Over the month, Naruto had shown how trustworthy and dedicated that he can be. As a result, Hiruzen planned to give the boy this task because he felt that the boy would be the greatest influence of the next generation and to be honest, the aged Sandaime wanted to give Naruto leadership experience early.

"What's so important about one student?" Naruto was intrigued that this mission was based on one person. "Who is it?"

"Uchiha Sasuke should be your main focus. His entire clan was murdered by his older brother four days ago. He is the only survivor and I believe that he could be a major flight risk if he doesn't build any kind of connections with people in the village. Your main task is to do everything in your power to keep him in the village. To build some kind of bond with him."

Two weeks ago, Naruto read a scroll that went over the clans of Konoha and he of course understood the fact that the last Uchiha was something of importance to the village. He couldn't believe that the entire can was dead now though. Weren't the Uchiha supposed to be really powerful and the co-founders of the village.

"You must understand Naruto. This is important, we just ran a psych evaluation on Sasuke-kun and he is being effected by a disturbing amount of rage and revenge. I believe that the first opportunity that Sasuke can see, he will run away from the village to try and kill his brother, which at this point is an absolute death wish."

"But what if I fail?" Naruto was worried, his Jiji made it sound super important, he couldn't help himself from frowning. What if he couldn't do it? He didn't even know the guy and he was already worried about him. "What if I can't help him?" The blonde whispered to himself.

The student flinched when his teacher placed a hand on his shoulder but looked up anyways. "Don't worry about failing Naruto. Just do your best, that is all I ask of you. Don't force a friendship, just do your best and remember that this does not fall on your shoulders alone." 'Bless your big heart, you knuckle headed student of mine.'

"Don't worry about your task for now, I still have to go over our training while you're in the academy." That got a smile out of the Uzumaki. "You and I will be meeting here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday after the academy to continue building on your skills. I expect you to work at least one to two days every week to practice what you already know and continue mastering techniques you already know. From here on out, I will only be teaching you knew ideas and techniques. It will be your job to practice them yourself."

"Yeah I can do that Jiji, that should be easy. I can still ask you for help when I need it right?"

"Of course," the old man said, "I am your sensei. That is what I am here for. Now that we have all of that covered. Do you have any questions?"

"Nope, not right now at least."

"Good I will be taking my leave then. The rest of the day is yours to do what you wish with. I will see you later my boy." With everything said and done, Hiruzen disappeared in a poof of smoke, leaving Naruto by himself on the training ground.

Snatching a leaf from the ground, Naruto decided that he was going to take today easy and just practice his Chakra control. He had his first day of the academy tomorrow and he didn't want to tire himself out. 'I guess while I'm at it, I should start reading that psychology scroll. I need to be ready for my mission. I can't believe that Jiji gave me a mission, I better get paid for my troubles.'

As Naruto left for his house, he had no idea just how much trouble the next 5 years would prove to be.

Next day

"Everyone sit down and shut up!" The scary man with a scar yelled with his freaky big head.

Naruto scratched the back of his head in exasperation. 'I didn't sign up for this, did I?' He thought as he took a seat. Looking around, he noticed that he was sitting next to a girl with long, pink hair and a red dress with slits going up to the hip on each side. On his other side, he saw a brooding boy with duck-butt styled black hair, a navy shirt and white shorts. 'Frown, check. Uchiha crest on his back, check. Looks like a squirrel climbed up his butt and died, check check. This is definitely Sasuke.'

Naruto's thoughts were broken by his new sensei, "Alright class listen up! My name is Iruka and this is Mizuki." Iruka had a scar across his nose and wore the standard chunin uniform of the leaf flak vest and navy pants and shirt. His fellow teacher Mizuki, had chin length white hair and the standard chunin uniform as well. Not only that but, he looked like a dick in Naruto's esteemed opinion with that sneer on his face. He wouldn't judge too quickly though because his Jiji told him countlessly to never judge a book by its cover. "We are going to be your sensei for the next couple of years before you actually become shinobi of the village. I will be going over a role call to make sure everyone is here. When I say your name, I want you to respond that you are here. First off, Aburame Shino."

"Here" came from the spiky, dark haired kid who had on sun glasses and a white lab-like coat that covered up his face. If you listened carefully you could hear what sounded like bugs flying around. Naruto was going to get a kick out of it when the girls of the class found out he had bugs inside of his body.

"Akimichi Choji."

'munch, munch' "Here" 'munch' Choji spoke in between bites of his seemingly endless bag of chips. 'I thought those bags mostly had air in them, he has been eating the same bag for the past ten minutes faster than I can run around this room.' Choji was a rather rotund boy with what looked like an upside down blue diaper with brown hair sticking out in two protrusions. Naruto also noted the white scarf and green jacket that he had on.

"Haruno Sakura"

"Here" The girl right next to him said in a shy tone.

Moving on, Iruka called the next name, "Hyuuga Hinata"

"H-Here" Came the stuttering, shy response of the white eyed girl with the blue style hime haircut.

"Inuzuka Kiba"

"What the heck sensei! You didn't call out akamaru!" 'Yip, Yip' Came the energetic responses from the little white dog and his human.

'Im going to ignore that' Iruka thought before continuing "Nara Shikamaru" No response…

"Shikamaru" Still no response.

Looking over, Iruka noticed what looked like a pineapple made of black hair rested over a desk with a slight snore coming from it. Eye twitching repeatedly, Iruka promptly marched up to the lazy-ass Nara and proceeded to punch the desk he was asleep on to wake him up. Slowly Shikamaru shuffled around before muttering 'troublesome' and then sitting up. 'It's only been 30 minutes and I already want to retire. What have I gotten myself into?' Standing once again at attention in the front of the class, the scarred chunin continued. "Uchiha Sasuke"

"Hn" Well that was anti climatic.

"Uzumak-" He was cut off by the blonde who jumped on top of his desk "I'm here dattebayo! Uzumaki Naruto is here and he is bringing his A game. Watch out wor-" 'BANG!' "Shut up dobe!"

Naruto was shocked! The pink shy girl right next to him just punched him off of the desk and yelled at him. Wasn't she supposed to be shy like two minutes ago? 'I'm keeping my distance from her!'

"Anyways, um Yamanaka Ino"

"Here" The blonde girl with the pony tail said. Naruto noticed she was dressed in a purple sleeveless shirt with white arm warmers.

"Naruto get back to your desk. We are going to start reading."

Half an hour later

'Stop the madness, please, I can't take it anymore!' Naruto wanted to repeatedly slam his head into his desk but, Iruka already yelled at him for that once. Maybe he could use that jutsu to escape and just be done with the history lesson that the class was receiving.

"Ruto" 'huh?' was someone calling his name? Looking up, he saw Iruka barely a foot in front of his face with a twitch of the eye. "Naruto! Pay attention to class!" With that said, Iruka stomped back up to the front of the class. "ugghh!" Naruto groaned.

"I heard that!"

One month later

For the past month, each day went similar to his first day at the academy. He would get yelled at and then was forced to learn. Afterwards, the class would go outside to learn tai and shuriken-jutsu. After everyone had a turn in hand-to-hand combat which Naruto would purposely lose at, the class would go to lunch. When lunch was finished they would go into the classroom and continue to learn some more. To finish off the day, the class would learn chakra theory and practice their chakra control with the leaf spinning exercise.

As far as his little mission from the Sandaime was going, he was having a bit of trouble of trouble with some of his classmates. He had a few of his peers that he was really getting along with such as Kiba, Choji and Shikamaru. Together they would skip out on class and Naruto would convince them to either help with his pranks or he would get them to do some training with him. He could never get them to skip class but, occasionally Shino, Hinata or Ino would hang out with them too.

Naruto's real problems were with Sakura and Sasuke. Sakura had a major temper when it came to Naruto. She was straight up rude to him and would try to physically abuse him at any chance she could get. Naruto didn't understand it and he tried to keep his distance for the most part because of how vindictive she could be. Sasuke just ignored him. Okay fine,that was an understatement. You let a guy beat you in a couple spars and he thinks that he is completely beyond you, the pricks lucky that Naruto couldn't go all out on him. Naruto had tried to talk with Hiruzen on how he could try and make a breakthrough but none of their ideas would bear any fruit. It just seemed like Sasuke completely refused all outside help or acts of kindness. It couldn't be healthy to shut yourself in like that!

The academy and all of its frustrations aside, training with Hiruzen had been very successful. Naruto felt like he had a very good understanding on using his full henge (transformation) and he had managed to master his other jutsu as well. He even created another jutsu based on it. Naruto decided he was going to wait until the academy taught him the Kawirimi no jutsu (replacement jutsu) and with his Jiji's help he learned how to use the shunshin (body-flicker), Shuriken kage bunshin no jutsu (shuriken shadow clone jutsu) and how to climb on trees. His Jiji saw that it was fit to beginning training his elemental affinity which they found out was wind and start on water walking as well.

Today happened to be one of his off days from training with the Hokage and he just got off from a particularly irritating day from the academy. To blow off some steam he decided that he would go to the training ground he uses and practice some of his techniques.

Running off to the grounds, he started muttering to himself, "How was I supposed to know that Shikamaru would duck when I threw that eraser at him. I thought he was asleep, it's not my fault that the eraser hit Mizuki-teme in the no-no square. I couldn't predict that happening!" Unfortunately, Naruto didn't scout around himself to make sure he wasn't being followed.

Finally, he made it to his training ground. An open grassy field with a small lake off to his left and trees facing to his front and right side. Naruto did a small work out of laps around the field and then a couple sets of pushups and sit ups. With one handsign and the application of chakra, Naruto managed to create three clones of himself that took up fighting positions around him. Right before he signaled for the fight to start he noticed some one that was familiar to him peeking around the corner of a tree.

"Crap, Jiji is going to kill me when he finds out and he is probably going to make me play the kunai game again." Naruto let out a noticeable cringe at the thought. 'I might as well put on a show for her sense I'm caught anyways. I'll just have to make sure that she doesn't get away.'

With a chop of his arm the fight was called "Begin!"

Half an hour earlier with Ino

"There he is!" Ino finally found the boy she was looking for. "Naruto can be slippery when he wants to be."

Ino had very mixed feelings about the boy that she was watching right now. She had hung out with her fellow blonde two times or so and he seemed like a nice kid. He just liked playing pranks a little too much and he wasn't the brightest tool in the shed but still, he was all right.

She didn't understand then why everyone else hated him. She could hear her classmate's parents tell them to stay away from him because he was a monster. Her friend Sakura just plain outright hated Naruto. It wasn't even hard to find out why considering that Sakura's parents would force her to stay away from Naruto and would tell her that he had killed hundreds of people. Ino wasn't exactly a genius like a certain lazy Nara that she knew but she could see when things did not add up properly. So, she decided that she would take things into her own hands and find out if all of the gossip was true by following Naruto around for the day.

Ino started to follow her fellow blond at a distance to avoid detection. "Damn it" Ino whispered to herself after she almost tripped over a root in the ground. Quickly she hid behind a nearby tree just in case Naruto heard her. After waiting for 5 seconds, Ino looked back around the trunk of the tree to see that her target had not caught on to the fact that she was there.

Carefully she began to follow again, occasional looking for anything that could trip her again. Five minutes later, she came up to the end of a tree line to see a grassy field with the occasional pretty yellow or white flower growing here and there. To her left she could see a small lake that reflected the sun off of its surface. Looking back in the middle of the clearing, she got really confused when she could see not one but four Naruto's each staring each other down. Ino decided to settle down behind a tree and to keep watch for whatever her fellow blond would do next.

Looking closer at the four Naruto's, she noticed something weird. Three of the Naruto's were holding the same form as Naruto did in his fights at the academy. She assumed they were clones but, each clone held their hands as fists in a brawler style. What confused her was the fourth Uzumaki, he was in a form that she had never seen before. The blonde had his knees bent with one leg slightly in front of the other, looking up, she noticed that his hands were opened up and slightly bent as well as if he was going to grab something. If a chunnin level ninja or higher was to look at his form they would see that his profile was small with his elbows tucked in and his fists somewhat close to his face for more efficient fighting.

Suddenly, the Naruto with good form made a chopping motion and shouted "Begin!"

(Naruto will be referred to as himself, the three clones will just be refered to as the clones)

The clones all rushed at the fourth Naruto to begin the fight. The first one to get in close threw a hard-right jab. Naruto stepped in and moved his head to the right to avoid the punch. He was about to throw an uppercut into his clone's jaw when he noticed that one of the other clones was going in for a high kick to try and knock the original out quickly.

Acting smoothly, Naruto changed plans and decided to kick off the ground and tackle the clone in front of him. Upon hitting the ground, Naruto rolled and managed to quickly get off of his clone before it could grab him. With grace that surprised Ino, Naruto used his hands to give himself leverage to get off the ground and kick his feet under himself to once again stand up.

With Ino

"Why doesn't Naruto do anything like this in class spars?" Ino whispered to herself, shock evident on her face. 'What are you hiding?'

Back to Naruto

"You better try a little harder in round two, ehh?" Naruto taunted to his three clones.

"Let's see how you handle this!" The clone that got tackled said as he got up.

Suddenly, the other two clones grabbed him by the arm and threw him at Naruto.

"Henge (transformation)" In a puff of smoke, the clone turned into a Shuriken that sped straight towards Naruto.

As the clone changed into a shuriken, another one went through two handsigns before yelling out, "Shuriken Kage bunshin no jutsu!" The one shuriken turned into a wall of sharp metal as over a hundred shuriken had been formed. While the wave of weapons was set upon Naruto, the two other clones prepared to attack.

Naruto could instantly see it, there was a gap of space that he could get through. He knew what his clones were doing, they left a gap that he could get through in the middle of the shuriken just big enough to dive in which would leave him vulnerable to attack. He couldn't jump to the left or the right because the shuriken were spread out far enough in each direction that he would still become a pincushion. There was no jumping over it because he could see one of his two clones holding kunai in his hand ready to throw.

'I only have one option left' With his mind made up, Naruto decided to jump backwards and grab onto two kunai from his holster. He threw the first one and used the kunai kage bunshin no jutsu to multiply his weapon into his own wall of steel. With the kunai remaining in his hand, he began to deflect the incoming shuriken that made it past his thrown kunai.

He was about to deflect the very last one when all of a sudden, it transformed back into the third clone which promptly grabbed onto both of his wrists and was about to headbutt him when Naruto decided to lean away and fall on his back. As he fell on his back, he also pulled back both arms effectively smashing his clone into the ground with twice the force of normal.

Naruto and the clone both got up quickly and were about to square up again when randomly, the girl that was watching him screamed. "Haha! I guess that it's time to talk to her now." Naruto said as he dropped his stance and started to walk to the girl that his secret clone scared the crap out of.

With Ino

"How did he do that?" Ino stared at her fellow blonde in wonder. She couldn't believe that he could use these kind of techniques, he even managed to stop over a hundred shuriken with the same jutsu and just deflected the rest. She could see that he moved with a practiced ease that she hadn't seen from him before.

To be honest, Naruto reminded her of the thorns on a rose with the way that he was fighting. You would never think that a rose could hurt you but, if you hold it wrong than it would prick you. It was the same with Naruto well, kinda she didn't think he was beautiful like a rose. Especially, with his super ugly orange track suit but he had the hidden grace and elegance of one.

"Boo!" A figure suddenly jumped down in front of her and she screamed, "Aaahhhhhhh!" Ino fell back onto her butt, she was scared until she noticed that whoever scared her started to laugh.

Fuming with anger, she looked up and found herself staring at another Naruto who was clutching his gut and laughing to the point that he looked like he was about to cry.

"Y-You should haha ha-have seen yur face hahah" The clone was laughing in between words and could barely keep control of itself.

"I'll show you!" Ino got up quickly and delivered a massive haymaker to the clone. She was confused afterwards when the clone burst into chunks of rock and rubble.

"Sorry Ino, I didn't mean for my clone to scare you." Naruto said as he walked over, smirk clearly seen on his face.

Ino frowned as she thought 'You lying shithead' "What was that?"

"What was what?" Naruto asked while whistling innocently, "Your going to have to be more specific."

"That" Ino pointed at the clone that was now rubble on the ground "And that" She pointed out at the field where Naruto's clones were still standing before she returned her hands to her hips and glared pointedly at Naruto as if to say 'If you lie to me, im going to make your life hell.'

The Uzumaki gulped after seeing her face, that didn't look healthy for him. "Fine, that" The blonde sighed before pointing at the rubble on the ground "is my Iwa bunshin no jutsu (rock clone jutsu) that I taught myself how to do. When I was on the field, I was fighting against those clones of myself to practice fighting multiple targets at once."

Ino didn't believe for one second that Naruto had taught himself how to fight like that or that he learned that jutsu on his own but she didn't say anything about it. Instead, "Why are you keeping it secret that you can do all of this. You wouldn't be the dobe of the class. I'm pretty sure that what I have seen from you is better than Sasuke-kun."

Naruto couldn't tell her about his mission from the Sandaime but, that wasn't the only reason he had. "Your smart, I'm sure that you could tell that a lot of people don't like me," Ino's frown confirmed his deduction, "If people found out that I am hiding my strength than things would get worse for me. I need you to promise me that you won't tell anyone!"

Ino could see the fear plain as day on his face and knew that he was telling the truth. "Why don't people like you?" She wanted to know, sure Naruto could be a pain with his jokes but she just found out that he isn't as stupid as she thought he was. She wanted to help him but, she needed to know how she could.

"Honestly, I don't know. No one will tell me, not the adults, not the Hokage, no one." Naruto held a frown on his face at not knowing but, he had faith that he would get through it.

"I promise on one condition" Ino said staring Naruto in the face daring him to say no.

"huh?" Was Naruto's well thought out response.

"I'll keep your abilities a secret on one condition. And that's if you train me." Was Ino's response filled with determination.

Naruto's eyes widened in shock, she wanted him to train her? 'I guess I could, it would make my mission easier and it's always nice to have a partner' but, first he needed to know why she wanted to train with him.

"Why do you want me to train you?"

Ino looked sheepish for all of two seconds 'I can't tell him that this gives me the perfect opportunity to find out the mystery surrounding him. He does look like he knows what he is doing and the academy has been really boring. Plus I think it would be fun to have him as a friend, not that I would tell him that.' "Because if your that strong then you can make me stronger too."

"That's not what I mean Ino. I'm asking you why you want to be stronger. Is it for fame, money, your family or maybe your village? What makes you want to be a ninja?"

The Yamanaka heiress was not expecting that kind of question from Naruto. She supposed that it may have been some kind of test for her by him. "I want to be a ninja so that I can protect my friends, family and village. Also, so that I can have an amazing body when I'm older" Ino struck a pose to get her point across. "Why does that matter?"

Ignoring her pose, Naruto said, "Cause, if you gave me the wrong reasons than I was going to tell you no but, I like your reasons so I will help you if you want."

Of course, Ino would take the offer. "Yeah I do. You're going to train me whether you want to or not. So you better teach me something good."

"Okay, so um, I'm usually busy on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays so we can't train on those days but any other day will work. What days do you want to train with me?"

Ino thought for a moment. She almost always had Tuesdays and Saturdays that she could do whatever she wanted after the academy or after helping out for a couple of hours at her family's flower shop. "How about on Tuesdays and Saturdays?"

"That works, I'm usually here all day on Saturdays and we can walk over here on Tuesdays after the academy."

"Perfect!" Ino smiled at her new friend before realizing how dark it was starting to get "I have to go home now, I don't want my parents to get mad at me. I'll see you tomorrow Naruto. And your secrets safe with me." The blonde girl walked back towards the village to get back home.

"Bye Ino!" Naruto yelled to her before she disappeared from his sight. 'Jiji is going to be so mad when he finds out.'

Meanwhile in the Hokage tower

Hiruzen was happy for his surrogate grandson. He had watched on his crystal ball and witnessed everything that happened.

'So, my student has taken on his own student. Interesting. I think I should watch over their training sessions for a while to see how things go.' He was glad that Naruto didn't let slip where he had learned his techniques from but, he would watch what happens. Maybe Ino could prove to be trustworthy and could handle the truth. It would definitely make Naruto's mission easier.

"I think I have found my answer. I believe that Naruto is responsible enough to handle the truth."

End Chapter

An: Thank you everyone for tuning in. We had quite a bit happen in this chapter. Naruto started in the academy and iruka wants to retire already. We saw the first fight of the fic and some jutsu that Naruto has learned. Not to mention that Naruto has found a student/training partner in Ino. Let me know what you thought of the fight, it was a little teaser to see if I could actually do a good job of writing my fight scenes or if I needed to practice a lot more for future fights to come. Now onto the mysteries. What is the secret that Hiruzen is going to reveal for Naruto, will Iruka actually retire or go bald due to stress and Naruto ever change his ugly orange jumpsuit? Find out next time on Answers of the Heart. Spirals out.


	3. It's time I told you

AN: Hey guys, welcome back to another chapter of Answers Of The Heart. Sorry about the delay on this chapter, I had quite the busy week at work. Due to a couple of people's reviews and pms, I want to let everyone know that this won't follow cannon it won't be long until something happens that will make this diverge from the story we all know and love. I also want to make it clear that the Iwa bunshin is the jutsu that Naruto learned from Hiruzen. He doesn't know kage bunshin (yet). Anyways, onward to the next chapter.

Disclaimer: You know it by now, I know it by now so I'm just going to say it…. I don't own Naruto. And that's the truth.

Answers Of The Heart

Flashback

Hiruzen and Naruto were off to the side of their training ground taking a break. It had been two and a half weeks since the blonde started learning from the Hokage. If one were to look around the field, they would notice the kunai and shuriken sticking out throughout the grounds, evidence of Hiruzen's new favorite pastime; the kunai game.

"You're an asshole you know that Jiji?" The blonde panted out.

"Believe it or not, I have been called worse Naruto-kun." The man chuckled to himself

There was a moment of comfortable silence as Naruto caught his breathe and the Hokage let him. Suddenly, the blonde boy broke the silence with a question, "Hey Jiji, what's the world like?"

Sighing the old man laid back to stare at the sky. He was soon copied by the boy he considered a grandson. After a brief moment the aged man answered, "The world is beautiful, there are many places to see and things to experience. But, it is also a very scary place. The Shinobi Nations are constantly at a state of war and any unbalance can make things worse. Unfortunately, it is the way of the world, shinobi are one with treachery and death…." Another sigh, "I have seen more than my fair share of war over the years and it is not something that I would ever wish on another."

The blonde was surprised to hear what his Jiji said, he had never experienced anything remotely similar to war but, to hear from his Jiji how horrible it is made him never want to experience such a thing.

"Why do we fight each other so much? Why doesn't everyone be friends?"

Naruto couldn't understand, wouldn't it be better for villages to be friendly towards each other. No one would have to fight to the death or lose their loved ones.

"It is the way of our world, there is no trust between any of the villages. I have tried to extend a hand of friendship many times to the other villages but, no one can let go of their grudges."

"Well then I'm going to be the one to make the villages see how stupid their acting and to stop people from dying in war!" Naruto said with determination in his eyes and a raise of his fist.

Hiruzen couldn't help but smile at his attitude but, even still. "As much as I love seeing your determination shine my boy, I do have to let you know that this will be quite the task." Naruto looked at his Jiji in wonder. "Your dream is admirable, it really is but, I want you to focus on getting stronger. I want you to be able to protect yourself and your precious people from those who would hurt you."

"What do you mean Jiji?"

"One man cannot create peace by himself. To create peace, it takes the commitment of everyone working together. Don't focus on stopping war from ever happening, instead I want you to focus on two things. The first is becoming as strong as you possibly can and the second is to cherish the bonds that you create with others. I believe that when you fight for the people most important to you, that is when you are at your strongest."

Naruto contemplated what his Jiji had to say and thought about the people that were important to him. He could only count three people in his life that meant that much to him and one of them was his Jiji. The other two; Teuchi and Ayame owned Ichiraku Ramen and had helped him in so many ways. Whether it was teaching him how to read, buying some of his clothes for him or his favorite, providing him with the best food on the planet, Ramen! Naruto understood what the old man was saying. He would do just about anything for those three people.

Naruto was broken out of his thoughts when his sensei stood up, "Come on Naruto, we have some more training to get done."

End flashback

Naruto had been thinking back to that memory quite fondly. He now had more than three people that he considered precious he could now add Kiba, Shikamaru, Choji, Ino and surprisingly Shino to the list. Ino was a given because they had started training together regularly about two weeks ago. Kiba, Shikamaru and Choji were another given because he played pranks with them and also skip class with them too. It was surprising that Shino would hang out with him, they started really being friends when Naruto found out that Shino housed insects in his body but, rather than getting grossed out like the dark-haired boy thought, Naruto actually commented how cool that was. Ever sense then, the two would hang out during school, Shino would be the voice of reasoning that forced Naruto to really think before making a stupid decision and Naruto would be the one who made life interesting.

Speaking of the insect user's skills in reasoning, Shino should have been trying to use them on Naruto now. The reason being that Iruka took the day off of school due to sickness. Therefore, Mizuki was in charge of teaching the class for the day. This wouldn't be a problem at all except for the fact that Mizuki left the class for a minute to go get a paper that he forgot at the teachers' lounge and Naruto decided to position a chair in front of the door to keep it from opening. He wasn't done either, he took a kunai out of his holster and set up a trap with ninja wire that would fire the kunai at the door once it opened. One thing that everyone noticed about the kunai was that the tip was completely broken off.

Right as Naruto sat back down in his seat, everyone could hear the door knob shaking as someone tried to enter the room.

"What the!? This stupid door won't open!" The class could see the door visibly shake as the person on the other side tried to get in.

'I would stop Naruto-kun because we have training after school and I don't want him to get a detention but, I want to see what happens.' Ino thought with a smirk. By this point in time she had a good idea of what would happen next and she didn't want to be disappointed.

'What is Naruto-Baka doing? Tch, Idiot.' Were the thoughts of a certain pink haired girl.

Finally, the door budged in to reveal Mizuki, fuming in anger, "Who the hell is the little brat who did th- oough!" The angry teacher was stopped from yelling when a blunt kunai was released from a trap and smashed him right where the sun doesn't shine.

Everybody cringed while Naruto and Kiba laughed out loud. Nobody noticed but, Ino was also quietly laughing to herself, 'And Naruto wins again!'

Ino didn't know why but, Mizuki straight up hated Naruto and would often send him out of the classroom whenever he could get the chance or he would get the blonde in trouble. Naruto had taken it upon himself to prank Mizuki whenever he got the chance as revenge and nobody would try to stop him.

"Naruto! I know that was you, get over here!" Naruto stood up and slowly walked to the front of the class sporting a giant smirk on his face and keeping his hands stuffed in his pockets. Upon reaching Mizuki, the teacher finally blew up, "And what do you have to say for yourself gaki?"

"I don't think it was funny enough, I think next time I should use water balloons instead of the kunai. What do you think Mizuki-sensei? That should make it better." Naruto said with a straight face, hoping to get some kind of rise out of Mizuki.

The chunnin's eye began to twitch 'Must not stab him. Must not stab him.' Was the mantra that he repeated in his head. Finally, the chunnin snapped out of his thoughts and noticed that Naruto was walking back to his seat and he yelled, "Naruto! I'm giving you detention after class today. I hope you like cleaning the classrooms!"

Ino couldn't help but frown because she was supposed to train with her fellow blonde after class today. She looked up at Naruto as he was passing her to see that he was still smirking. The Yamanaka was confused until she noticed that he gestured down to her desk. When she looked down she saw a note sitting right next to her hand and she quickly snatched it before anyone could see it.

Opening it up, she found a sentence; _Same place, same time, see you there._ 'So, Naruto still plans on coming to training, is he going to skip detention?' Turning toward the other blonde, she caught his eye and gave him a confused look. He responded with a shrug and a small smile before lowering his head to his desk. Hoping for the day to end quickly.

End of class

Ino casually made her way to the training ground that she shared with Naruto. Upon arriving in the clearing, she found that she was by herself and decided to start warming up. She followed her sensei's instructions and started running laps around the clearing before practicing her taijutsu stances. As she was going through her stances, she felt a slight shift in the wind.

"Boo!" Suddenly, someone grabbed her by the shoulders. "Awhh!" Ino shouted out as she turned around and punched whoever it was in the face. When she noticed who it was she started fuming, "Naruto! You baka, stop scaring me!"

"Hahah s-sorry Ino. I can't help it, your reaction is to funny," Naruto got up as he started checking his face for any blood, "Dang Ino, your punches are starting to hurt a lot more!"

"Whatever," Ino crossed her arms before remembering, "How are you here? Shouldn't you be in detention?" 

"I created an Iwa bunshin (rock clone) and traded places with it. You and I can train while he goes to detention for me!"

"And what if it falls apart Naruto? You could risk our sensei's finding out about you hiding your strength." Ino was concerned, she didn't want people making Naruto's life more difficult. After she started hanging out with her fellow blonde, she quickly found out that people would always say bad things about him whether he was around or not. A few people had even asked her parents if it is even smart to allow her to hang out with Naruto.

She had seen how other parents would tell their children to stay away from him. It was really sad for her to see that and she was grateful that her parents allowed her to be around him and even encouraged her to bring him over sometime so that they could meet him. She was hoping that she could get Naruto to come over today to meet her parents because she thought that it would be good for him to meet more friendly people.

She was pulled out of her thoughts when Naruto spoke, "Don't worry about it Ino-chan, I put enough chakra in that clone to last all day if I needed it to. Let's start training, today you and I are going to practice advanced chakra control."

Mocking a salute, Ino said, "Aye sensei!" as if she was a soldier before asking, "So what are we doing?"

Naruto smirked before responding, "You're going to be climbing trees."

They were both silent for a moment before, "…What!? What does climbing trees have to do with chakra control? I don't get it."

The Uzumaki couldn't help himself from laughing. Instead of talking he just walked over to a tree and when Ino thought he was going to run right into it, he stuck a foot onto the tree and continued walking up the surface of the tree shocking Ino. When he reached the top, he performed a shunshin (body flicker) without any handsigns and reappeared in front of Ino. He once again smirked when he noticed that his students jaw was just about mopping the ground.

"What did I just do Ino-chan?"

Ino sputtered out, "Wh-what do you mean 'what did I just do' You just walked up a freaking tree! That shouldn't be possible!" Naruto expected that answer, he responded the exact same way when his Jiji taught him this exercise. He decided that he would also teach this exercise the same way that he was taught.

"Analyze it Ino. I told you that it was a chakra exercise so, how did I do it?"

Ino thought about what she saw before her eyes widened a little. "You used chakra on your feet to hold you against the tree."

"Good job Ino!" The blonde female had a big smile on her face when she found out she was correct. "The feet are the hardest part to apply chakra to. If you can push chakra out through your feet then you should be able to push chakra out of anywhere else just as easily, if not easier." Naruto took a kunai out of his pouch and handed it to Ino. "I want you to take that kunai and run up the tree. When you are about to fall off, I want you to mark your spot with the kunai. This should take you a couple days to get down so take your time and make sure you perfect it."

Instead of running at the tree, Ino decided to walk up to a tree and test sticking her foot to the tree. She noticed that when she put some weight on her foot that it would slide down the tree. After thinking about it for a little bit, she added a little more chakra to her foot and noticed that it didn't slide down the trunk of the tree when she applied more weight on her leg. She quickly did the same with her other foot to make sure that she could do it with both legs.

Once she was satisfied, Ino took a couple steps back. Suddenly, she ran at the tree and started racing up it. The blonde shocked Naruto by making it three quarters of the way up the tree in her first run before she marked her spot and fell off of the tree. After she landed back on the ground, she looked over at her sensei and noticed his expression, "What's wrong, did I do something wrong?"

Naruto shook himself before answering, "No way. That was amazing Ino! You got way farther on your first time than I did on my first ten times combined." Ino blushed at the praise she was receiving.

"Why did it take you so many times to get that far?" Ino asked in curiosity.

"The more chakra someone has, the harder it is to control and the less chakra someone has, the easier it is to control." And suddenly, Ino was glaring at him.

Naruto started to sweat due to the girl's glare, "W-what's wrong Ino-chan?"

Ino continued her heated glare before responding, "Did you just imply that I have a tiny amount of chakra?"

"N-no." Naruto could swear that he saw some kind of glowing aura around her and it freaked him out. "The amount of chakra you have is actually pretty decent, remember that I've been having you master the leaf twirling exercise for the past two weeks. That gave you a lot more control over your chakra reserves."

When Naruto said master, that was an understatement. Under Naruto's tutelage, Ino had gotten to the point that she could spin leaves on all ten fingers while she practices the forms for her taijutsu stances.

"Keep practicing, as soon as you can get to the top of the tree and back down then we are going to start sparing on the surfaces of the trees so you can get used to fighting on a vertical surface."

With that said, Ino continued training and Naruto sat down and started trying to cut a leaf for the first step of learning how to use his wind affinity. He wanted to finally cut the stupid leaf in half because his Jiji promised him a few futon techniques when Naruto completed the task.

Two hours later

Ino was exhausted and completely out of chakra, she had managed to get up to the top of the tree and a third of the way back down before falling off. During her training, she noticed that Naruto was doing something with a leaf, she wanted to ask him what he was doing but she stopped herself because she noticed how focused he was. Deciding that she was finished for the day, she slowly made her way back to Naruto and dropped down next to him and leaned her back against his shoulder. The blonde boy was broken from his task and looked over to notice Ino leaning against him. "Hey, what's up?"

Ino looked over her shoulder towards Naruto and said, "I'm finished for the day and I'm resting before we go to my house. What are you working on?"

It completely flew over Naruto's head when his fellow blonde said that they were both going over to her house and he instead answered her question, "I'm trying to cut the leaf in half with my chakra so that I can start learning how to use futon ninjutsu."

Ino looked down and saw that he had a ton of leaves laying around them that were all split at least three quarters of the way down the leaf. She also noticed the one in Naruto's hands that was almost completely cut all the way through. "So when are you going to teach me this?"

"I'll teach you how to do this once you master the tree walking exercise and the exercise after it. And after we get your taijutsu better."

"Can't you teach it to me first?" Ino pouted.

Naruto was tempted to say yes but, he held strong "Sorry Ino, you need to complete the basics before you can learn this."

"Please"

"No"

"Fine you win this time Naruto," Ino started getting up and she pulled up the other blonde "Come on."

"Um, where are we going?" Naruto wasn't aware that they were going anywhere.

"I already told you, you're coming to my house. My parents want to meet you." Ino continued to drag Naruto until he applied chakra to his feet and stopped her.

"I'm sorry Ino, I can't today. I have to go to the Hokage's tower to get my monthly allowance and then I have to go shopping for food."

The Yamanaka stopped trying to pull on Naruto and instead turned to face him. "Fine, but you are going to come to my house tomorrow after school whether you want to or not. Do you understand?" She put her hands on her hips and glared at Naruto. Daring him to say no.

Naruto knew the glare that he was receiving from the blonde. He knew that if he said no then he was going to be getting a beating from the girl before him so he decided to nod, not trusting his voice with the fear he was feeling.

Quicker than a shunshin (body flicker), Ino's expression changed to one of happiness before she hugged Naruto, said 'see you tomorrow' and left.

'Girls are scary' Naruto thought as he sweat dropped.

"I should probably get to the tower and see Jiji."

Half an hour later

'Knock, knock' The man looked up from the paper work on his desk, "Come in" The man said.

The man was pleasantly surprised to see his blonde student dressed in an ugly orange jumpsuit. "Ah Naruto, sit down my boy. What brings you in?"

The blonde sat down in one of the chairs and looked out the window behind the Hokage. It always made him feel surreal to look upon the entire village from the tower. He could see all of the buildings, the faces of the Hokage monument and even the wall surrounding the village in the distance.

After filling his eyes with the sight of the village, he turned towards the Hokage. "I came to let you know that I won't be able to train tomorrow and to let you know that I finished the leaf cutting exercise." Naruto showed the Hokage a leaf that was perfectly cut down the middle.

"Good job on the leaf cutting exercise Naruto, I will set you up with a few new jutsu on our next training session and after you master those jutsu than you can do the final step in learning futon ninjutsu. Now why can't you train tomorrow?"

"Well you know about Ino right?"

Hiruzen did in fact know that Naruto was training his own student. He had confronted the blonde about it on the next day. He wasn't mad since Ino didn't find out that he was training Naruto he did however, chew out the boy for not paying attention to his surroundings. Overall, Hiruzen did approve of the two blondes training together.

"Yes" Hiruzen responded back.

"She's making me go to her house after class tomorrow. She said her parents want to meet me."

Hiruzen couldn't help the smile that found its way on his face, he knew that Inoichi and his wife would treat Naruto impartially. They would get to know him for him, not the Kyuubi in his stomach. The only thing that worried him is the fact that Inoichi could find out about Naruto's training. After all, he was sharp enough to be the second in command of the Torture and Interrogation department. Hiruzen was certain that he already noticed Ino's improvements and if he wanted to meet Naruto then he most likely thought that Naruto was behind it.

'I think I can trust Inoichi to keep Naruto's training a secret. I'll wait until tomorrow and see what happens.'

"Go ahead and meet her family tomorrow. We can continue training later."

"Okay Jiji. I need help with Ino though."

"What's wrong Naruto?"

"I don't know if I can keep telling her that I've been teaching myself the skills I have. She's getting curious and it's only a matter of time before she starts following me around on days that we are supposed to train Jiji."

"Do you believe that you can trust her?"

"I think so. She hasn't told anyone in school that I'm holding back. She's easily my best friend."

Hiruzen thought about it for a minute before coming to a decision. "This is a major risk that you are taking. If she tells other people it will make things harder for me to protect you from the villagers. However, she could be a valuable friend and ally to you if she keeps your secret. I leave the decision to you to make."

"Thanks, Jiji. I won't let you down!" The Sandaime was about to speak however, he stopped himself when Naruto's eyebrow raised and he frowned. After a moment of silence, Naruto spoke what was on his mind, "Jiji. You've talked about protecting me from the village a couple of times now. How come? I understand that a lot of people hate me but why do you need to protect me?"

The room was filled with an empty silence. Hiruzen contemplated with himself for a while before he decided that the blonde in front of him was ready to know the truth, "I'm only telling you this because I feel that you are ready to know about it. Please let me tell my story and then you can ask all of the questions that you have after I have finished. Okay?"

Hiruzen received a nod from the blonde telling him that he was ready to listen. The old man was prepared to tell the whole truth because he felt that Naruto deserved to know.

"It all started on the day you were born. The day that you were born, we were attacked by the Kyuubi, a malevolent being constructed purely of chakra. As you know, the story told was that the Yondaime Hokage killed the Kyuubi at the price of his own life. That story isn't exactly true as it is impossible to kill the Kyuubi instead, it was sealed inside of a baby," Naruto's eyes widened as he caught on to what his Jiji was telling him. "You were the baby that the Kyuubi was sealed into. Now, don't be confused. You only hold the Kyuubi, nothing more and nothing less. It was the wish of your parents that you were to be seen as a hero to the village; the child who held back the Kyuubi every day from destroying the village. When the Yondaime died, I was forced to take back the seat of the Hokage again. I wanted to keep your identity as the Kyuubi vessel a secret but, the village already found out. Instead I passed a law prohibiting anyone from talking about you holding the Kyuubi. I hoped that I could give you a normal life however things didn't work out that way."

Naruto just stared in silence. It was a lot to take in at once. He didn't know if he should be angry or not. He understood that the people were in pain after losing their loved ones but at the same time, he had been neglected. People would kick him out of stores, say bad things about him and throw things at him. He didn't know what to think.

'Do I even want to be the Hokage for a village that absolutely hates me? I don't know. I love the village but I don't know if I can give everything up for it after knowing this.'

"I understand that you are upset Naruto. I'm not going to ask you to forgive the village nor will I ask you to continue on with the mission that I have given you. I only ask you to do one thing. I want you to think about the friends you have made in the academy and the Ichiraku family. I want you to cherish those friendships, as long as you have friends to stand by your side you will never be weak and you will never go through the same pain that you are probably feeling right now."

"Okay Jiji. I'm going to go. I need to clear my mind and think this through. I just don't know what to think right now." Naruto said in a depressed whisper as he got up and started leaving the office.

"Okay Naruto. I have faith that you will bounce back from this." The old man whispered the last part to himself as he watched the boy he considered his grandson leave the office.

Later

Naruto had spaced out, lost in his thoughts as he walked. Naruto soon found himself sitting in the training ground that he and Ino often frequented. He noticed where he was at and decided to sit down by the water's edge to try and clear his mind.

Finding out about the Kyuubi depressed him. Who wouldn't be depressed after finding out the reason why they were hated by almost an entire village because of something that they couldn't control. He wouldn't attack the villagers because that would just prove to them that he was the monster that they made him out to be. His dream of being the Hokage just wasn't appealing to him right now.

His depression soon turned into frustration as he didn't know what to think. To let off some of his frustration, he flicked his hands into a seal. With a spike of his chakra, an Iwa bunshin (Rock clone) formed from the ground and grabbed a kunai.

"I need to let off some frustration right now."

The clone nodded before it started to run at Naruto, intent on beating him quickly. Naruto met the clone half way and both threw a punch. Both blondes caught the punch with their other hand and pushed against each other, trying to overpower the other. Finally, Naruto kicked his clone away from him and threw a kunai.

After the use of two hand signs, the kunai multiplied into twenty kunai. Having nowhere else to go, the clone jumped upwards to avoid the attack. As gravity started to kick in, the clone started falling back to the earth below. Naruto jumped at the descending clone and struck it in the gut with his knee.

As the clone flew away from the strike, it didn't notice that the blonde had left an explosive tag on the back of its leg. The clone hit the ground and bounced due to the impact while the original gracefully landed on the balls of his feet. The clone slowly got up and snarled as it started to pull out another kunai. The clone was about to toss it when it heard a sizzling sound. It looked around to try and find the noise but, it was too late. The tag exploded, turning the clone into a pile of rubble.

For the rest of the night, Naruto would create one Iwa bunshin after another to fight until he fainted due to exhaustion. He had a long day today and if he was being honest, he was still depressed. Fighting the clones of himself only helped him get his mind off of the knowledge he learned of today.

Meanwhile in an unknown location

It was late in the night. A figure slowly spiraled into existence in the dark room. The figure wore a black cloak with an odd orange mask styled as a spiral with one eye hole. The man looked around the room and noticed that the occupant was asleep in his bed.

'It's time. He will be mine.' The cloaked figure slowly walked over to the sleeping child. Upon reaching the child, he woke the boy up.

"Why are you in he-" The boy never got to finish what he was saying as he looked into the mystery man's eye only to be caught in a trance. The boy suddenly fell asleep with a smile on his face.

'The genjutsu worked.' The man was smirking behind his mask, "It's time that I take my leave, I have great things planned for you boy." The cloaked intruder slowly disappeared from existence, seemingly being sucked into his own eye.

End chapter

AN: So originally, I planned on keeping all of the teams the same but, right now I don't know if I like that idea. So, I'm going to let you guys help me decide, during the next chapter I will show more of the rookie 9 that way you have an idea of how they will interact with others in the story. The placement of the teams won't have any kind of crazy big impact on where the story goes. I also want to let everyone know that I felt that it was a good time for Naruto to learn about the Kyuubi. It will be important for the next couple of chapters and help me shape Naruto into the kind of hero that I want him to be. As always, let me know what you think and thank you for tuning in for another chapter.


	4. Friends you can trust

An: Hey everybody, welcome back to the next chapter to Answers of the Heart.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto

Answers Of The Heart

Birds chirping and the wind blowing on his face, these are the sounds and sensations that woke Naruto up from his restless slumber. Looking around him, he could see the rubble all around him from the late-night fight he immersed himself in. The blonde slowly stood up and noticed the blood and the cuts that destroyed his clothes.

"Shit, I have half an hour until the academy starts!"

With the use of a hand sign, Naruto performed a shunshin (Body Flicker) and set off for his house so that he could change.

An hour later

Ino was getting worried, class already started for the day and Naruto had yet to show up for the day. Her fellow blonde was usually late but, never by this long. He still had to come to her house and meet her parents. Suddenly, the door opened to reveal the very blonde that she was thinking about. Ino was happy to see him until she noticed how unusually hollow his blue eyes looked and the exhaustion that was clear on his face.

"Naruto, Your late! What do you have to say for yourself?" Iruka yelled at his student. He was expecting for Naruto to say some kind of witty remark. Imagine his surprise when the blonde just slowly looked at his teacher and said, "Sorry sensei" in a voice void of emotion.

The blonde slowly walked his way to his seat, not noticing the questioning gazes of all his friends. When he reached his seat right next to Shino, he laid his head down in his arms and stayed that way.

Ino was really worried now. She had never seen her best friend shell up like that before. He was perfectly fine yesterday, so what happened? The look in his eyes was one of pain and confusion, it didn't help that he wasn't talking at all, that just wasn't like him. It also confused her that he no longer had on his orange jumpsuit, instead he had on a white shirt with the symbol of Konoha on it and a pair of tan shorts. Since they met, he had always told her that he would never change his jump suit and so it honestly concerned her that he didn't have it on right now. He just looked so… hurt.

Shino and Shikamaru didn't know what to think either. They had come to the same conclusions as Ino and they didn't know what to think. Both of them knew that Ino was Naruto's best friend so they both tried to catch eye contact with the girl to see if she knew what was going on. Slowly she realized that she was being watched and she looked over to see the two boys looking at her. Shino pointed at Naruto as if to ask 'what's going on with him?' Ino frowned before she shrugged. All three decided that they would confront the blonde boy when lunch came.

The clock slowly ticked away, serving to frustrate the three concerned friends until finally, lunch time had arrived. "Okay class, you know the drill. Half an hour for lunch and then get back in the class so we can continue from where we left off." Iruka let the class know before he and Mizuki left for the teachers' lounge. Soon after, the rest of the class left to go enjoy lunch with the exception of Naruto, who was either spaced out or asleep and his friends, who noticed that the blonde wasn't getting up.

Everyone moved closer to him and Ino grabbed his shoulder and started shaking him, "Naruto! Naruto get your butt up and talk to us." Naruto raised his head up to see what was going on and saw his friends all around him. "Hey guys, what's up?" The blonde in question asked with a fake smile that they could all see through.

"You are acting strange. Why? Because you are never this quiet." Shino said in his monotone voice.

"I don't know what you're talking about, I'm fine guys! Seriously I'm fine." Naruto said with the biggest grin that he could make. But, they could see in his eyes that he was putting up a front to try and convince them.

"This is troublesome. Quit lying to us Naruto." The lazy Nara said to his normally hyper active friend.

Ino folded her arms on her chest and glared at her fellow blonde. She didn't need to say anything because her message was clear, she wanted him to stop lying and tell them what's wrong. Naruto gulped, he didn't know what he should tell them, he didn't want to tell them about the Kyuubi because they would probably treat him like everyone else does.

Finally, Naruto sighed before telling them, "I'm not alright. I learned about something last night that explains so much about my life. I don't know what to believe in anymore."

"Well, what is it?" Ino wanted to know because she couldn't help her friend if he didn't let her, "You know you can tell me."

"I can't, I don't want you guys to hate me either." Naruto whispered just loud enough for them to hear him.

Slap!

The guys were all surprised when Ino slapped Naruto across the face. "And who do you think we are Naruto, why would we worry about you throughout class and take the time to see that you were okay? We are here for you, there is no way we could hate you." The girl was absolutely pissed that her best friend had so little faith in her.

Her fellow blonde had just taken the slap to the face without any kind of complaint. He frowned when Ino had asked him why would they hate him. Who wouldn't hate him?

"Because… I'm a monster." The blonde knew that wasn't true in his heart but, it was so hard to not think of yourself like that when you constantly heard others call you that since you were really young.

'Troublesome, I'll let blondie handle him. She knows how to help him better than I do.' Shikamaru thought to himself.

"Look at me Naruto," Said Uzumaki looked at his best friend, "Before we became friends, do you know why I started hanging out with you?"

"No, I don't, why?"

"Because every time I ever heard anyone talk about you they would always say bad things about you, I've heard people call you a lot of bad things and people have told me to stay away from you but, I wanted to see why everyone said stuff like that." Naruto frowned, he hoped that she didn't think of him like that. "I found out that they were all wrong, you're the friendliest person I know, you've helped me a lot and you always have a big smile on your face. If you were a monster than you would never do any of that, you told me that you want to become strong enough that you can protect your friends from anything. A monster doesn't want to protect anyone. I could never hate you, you inspired me to be the best I can be. So please, tell me what's wrong cause I want to help you."

"She's right Naruto, why you ask? Because she cares about you and doesn't want you to be hurt." The insect user said.

Both blondes blushed at Shino's words before Shikamaru spoke too, "You blondes are troublesome. But she is right, we wouldn't hate you because of some stupid reason, your too nice for that."

Naruto couldn't stop the tears from rolling down his face, he had the greatest friends ever. "Okay I'll tell you but, you can't talk about it. Hokage-Jiji said that it's an S-rank secret punishable by death."

The three friend's eyes widened at the news, this had to be pretty big then. "Go on we're listening." Ino said.

Naruto didn't know how to say this so he decided to start with a history lesson, "What do you remember from when we learned about the Kyuubi?"

With his intelligent mind, Shikamaru had already come up with a few conclusions to how this was going to end. The other two, had no idea where Naruto was going with this. "The Yondaime sacrificed his life in order to kill the Kyuubi and saved the village." Shino said matter-of-factly.

"Yeah, that's what we were taught here in the academy but, it's not correct. The Kyuubi is pure chakra that has a conscious, it cannot be killed, it would just reform after a couple of years." And here comes story time, "On the day that I was born the Kyuubi attacked the village. The only way the Yondaime could stop the Kyuubi was to seal it away. The only thing strong enough to hold it is a person, preferably a baby because it can adapt to the Kyuubi's chakra better than an adult."

Ino's eyes widened as she realized what he was saying, "Y-you don't mean?"

"Yeah," Naruto started, "The day that I was born, the Kyuubi was sealed into me. The Sandaime Hokage wanted to keep it a secret so that I could have a normal childhood. But, people found out and spread it around the village… and it was too late. Everyone knew and as a result… I-I was kicked out of the orphanage when I was four and p-people would treat me badly. The only people I had that treated me nicely were Hokage-Jiji and the owners of a ramen shop… Until I came he-" Naruto was cut off when Ino launched herself at the blonde and hugged him tightly, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I'll never let you be alone ever again." Ino felt terrible, an entire village subjected one kid to all of that torment. How was Naruto so nice still?

Naruto couldn't believe that they didn't hate him, he was beginning to understand what his Jiji meant when he said to cherish his friendships. The blonde just found out how much he could trust these three friends.

"It's troublesome but, you're not the fox."

"What Shikamaru says is correct, you are not the fox. Your too loud and annoying to be a deadly monster." Shino said for his friend.

The blonde boy couldn't help the tears that fell down his face as he hugged Ino back, "You guys are the best, I was scared that you guys would hate me too when I told you." Then he realized what Shino said, "Hey! I'm not loud and annoying!" The blond yelled.

Ino was just about to give her own two cents when the door opened to reveal Sasuke with Sakura following behind.

Sasuke raised an eyebrow at the position of Ino and Naruto while Sakura scoffed at the two blondes. "Ino, what are you doing with that monster!?"

Said blonde knew that Sakura didn't like Naruto and she was fine with that but when her friend called Naruto a monster, that made her angry. Especially after learning about his tenant. Ino broke the hug with Naruto and stomped towards Sakura as she yelled, "Don't talk bad about Naruto-Kun, he doesn't deserve to be called a monster! He doesn't look like one, he doesn't act like one, so why do you call him that."

"You know why! I know that you hear all of the villagers and how they tell us to stay away from him. He's a monster who enjoys hurting others." Sakura shouted back

"So, you're just going to follow others and not make your own opinion about him. What did he do for you to be mean to him?" Ino was trying to keep herself from doing anything rash like punching Sakura but, it was getting more and more difficult every second.

"If you want to hang out with that Baka then fine but, I'm going to do something that's actually worth my time." The pink haired girl scoffed.

Ino was about to slap the stupid girl when, she was stopped by Naruto. "Don't Ino, it's not worth it." Naruto said with a frown evident on his face.

"Your pathetic Dobe, can't even stand up for yourself." With the yelling match between Ino and Sakura, nobody noticed Sasuke until he spoke and walked away to sit down in his normal spot by the window. Deciding that she had enough for now, Sakura followed after Sasuke and sat down next to him, trying to get him to talk to her.

"Some people!" Ino growled to herself before she grabbed Naruto by the shirt and walked over to her seat, forcing him to sit down next to her.

Slowly, the rest of the class trickled in, noticing the angry blonde female and the frowning Nara. "What's wrong?" Choji asked Shikamaru as he sat down next to him. A worried expression on his face.

"I'll tell you later. It's all troublesome anyway." The lazy kid said to his best friend.

As Kiba sat down next to Shino he asked, "What the hell happened in here? I can smell the anger!"

"It was a clash you might say, between two incensed individuals."

"What the hell does that even mean Shino!?" Kiba had no idea what Shino just said and just starred at the boy with the sun glasses.

"It means that Ino and Sakura just had a fight." The insect user responded back.

'Damn it! I missed a cat fight, why doesn't anything exciting happen around me!?' The Inuzuka laid his head down on his arms, watching the class as he secretly hoped for another girl fight.

Meanwhile, Hinata sat in her seat at the back of the room and immediately noticed how close Ino was sitting next to Naruto. She watched as the blonde girl put her hand on Naruto's and gave it a quick squeeze as she smiled at him. 'A-are they t-together?' Hinata couldn't help the frown that came to her face. She had a crush on the blonde boy but, she was too scared to talk to him.

Ino was just giving her best friend a reassuring squeeze of the hand to let him know that she was there for him. Slowly, the rest of the day went by with the teacher's boring lessons until it was finally time for everyone to leave class for the day.

"Come on Naruto, you're going to my house with me." The girl grabbed her fellow blondes hand and practically dragged him all the way to her house. She finally took Naruto passed a shop that he realized was called Yamanaka Flowers and brought Naruto up to the modest blue colored house residing behind the shop.

"Is that the flower shop that you've told me about?" Naruto asked in genuine curiosity.

"Yeah it is, maybe I can bring you in there sometime." Ino answered back with a smile on her face, "We can do that later, I want you to meet my parents."

Naruto was nervous about meeting her parents, he had no idea how they would treat him. Would they hate him because of the monster inside of him? "O-okay Ino"

Ino turned around to face him, she could hear the nervousness in his voice, "It'll be fine Naruto, my parents won't hate you for it," She said knowing that he understood what she meant, "Their going to be fair to you."

Ino opened the door to her house and pushed Naruto in before yelling, "I'm home and I brought company."

Naruto looked around and noticed that the house had a friendly feel to it with all of the pictures hung on the wall. He heard someone yell out, "I'm coming" before he saw a woman walking down the stairs of the home. He noticed that the woman had the same blonde hair that Ino had and figured she was Ino's mom.

"And who do we have here?" The woman asked.

"This is my friend, Naruto. Naruto this is my mom." Naruto could see the woman better as she walked down the stairs, she had green eyes with platinum blonde hair that reached down past her shoulders pulled into a pony-tail. She wore a lavender colored shirt with black shinobi pants. 'I see where Ino gets her love of purple from.'

"It's nice to meet you Naruto, you can call me Ikumi."

"Where's daddy at?" Ino asked her mom.

"He should be here very shortly, he just went over to see Shikaku for a minute." Suddenly the door opened behind the two kids to reveal a man who could only be Ino's father.

"I'm ho- oh everyone's right here. Hey Ino, hey honey." He gave the two girls a hug and the older one a kiss. "And who would this be?" Inoichi already knew who it was but, he figured he should ask just to be polite.

Ino introduced the younger male to the older. After introductions were made the blondes went into the kitchen where they talked as dinner was being made.

Naruto felt awkward, the family was just talking to each other and occasionally they would ask him questions. It was a little hard to fit in considering that he just met them and he never had his own family that he could spend time with. He liked the family, he just didn't know what to do or say.

"So, Naruto," Said boy was taken away from his thoughts by the older male, "You hang out with my daughter after class a couple days a week, right?"

The boy had no idea where this was going but answered truthfully anyway, "Um, yeah I do. Why?"

"I've noticed that Ino's chakra control has grown tremendously since you two started hanging out. I have also noticed her other skills grow at a faster than normal rate. I have a theory that you are training her, is that correct?" Inoichi noticed that Naruto didn't react to the question in any way that would give away the answer to the question however, both of them noticed that Ino flinched slightly from the question.

After seeing Ino's reaction, Naruto sighed, "Yeah, I've been training Ino-chan after school, she's a good student and I've learned a lot from teaching her." Ino blushed after hearing him say that about her.

"I see. How are you advanced enough to teach her? I saw her doing the tree climbing exercise and that is quite advanced for an academy student."

"Good luck getting that out of him Daddy, I've been trying to for a while now." Ino said as she glared at her best friend making her annoyance known.

'Should I tell them? Jiji said I could tell whoever I wanted. I know I can trust Ino for sure and I could just tell Inoichi to go see Jiji.' With his mind made up, he asked a question, "Can I trust all of you to keep it a secret if I tell you how I have advanced quickly?"

All three of them nodded. Ino was ecstatic, she would finally learn where her best friend was learning everything. "Okay," The blonde boy started, "I started training a month before the academy started, my sensei trained me every day for a month straight and he still trains me on days that I'm not teaching Ino." The boy was purposely drawing out his answer, trying to irritate Ino.

And it worked, "Just tell me already, Baka!" The girl yelled out.

"Fine, you take the fun out of everything," The blonde grumbled to himself. "My sensei is the one and only…" Naruto intended to keep the dramatic pause going for longer but, Ino kicked him under the table while throwing him a glare that promised pain and sorrow. "Okay I'll stop, I'll stop! My Sensei is Sarutobi Hiruzen, the Sandaime Hokage."

Inoichi had a couple ideas on who could be training the boy. He was not expecting Naruto to say that it was their Hokage that was his mentor. He wasn't the only one to not expect that, Ino and Ikumi thought he was lying.

"W-what, you can't be serious. Why would Hokage-sama train you?" Ino asked, not believing what her friend said.

"He's training me for a couple different reasons. Sensei has even been helping me with teaching you too. Oh, and sensei wants you to meet with him now that you know about it, Inoichi." Naruto told the adult Yamanaka.

"Very well, I will talk to Hokage-Sama tomorrow. How far along is my daughter in her training?"

"We've been working on her chakra control and her taijutsu forms. Ino-chan is almost ready to learn water walking and we are going to start sparring soon. She's been doing a really good job!" Both parents could see the blush on her face from the praise by Naruto, 'Inoichi-Kun and I are going to have to tease Ino about this.' Ikumi knew her daughter well and knew what that blush meant.

"Some time I would like to spar against you Naruto, I would like to see what Sandaime-Sama has taught you." The father said to the blonde boy. He was interested in seeing what kind of ninja Naruto would become, it is quite the honor to be trained by the Shinobi no Kami after all.

"I'm sure we can do it sometime but, I need to get going," Naruto stood up from the table, "It's getting late and I should head home."

After saying his farewells to the family and thanking Ino for today, Naruto took his leave from Yamanaka household. The blonde boy made his way to his Jiji's office to go see him after meeting with the family.

Making his way into the office he saw the old man sitting at his desk, patiently waiting for his student. "Naruto, how was your day? You seem to be better now, my boy." The old man had been talking about yesterday when he told the boy about the Kyuubi.

"I'm a lot better Jiji. I have some questions though."

"Go ahead and ask. I will answer to the best of my abilities."

Naruto asked in a quiet voice, "Why did the Yondaime choose me?"

Sarutobi felt more tired than he had felt in a long time. He didn't want to tell Naruto but, the boy deserved to know and he trusted him, "He chose you because he knew you could handle it. He had more faith in you than he did in anyone else to handle this burden."

"Why me?" Naruto couldn't understand why the Yondaime would choose him of all people. He was just a small boy with no family.

"Because," It was time, he promised himself that he would tell Naruto the whole truth. Naruto deserved to know this, "The Yondaime, Namikaze Minato is… your father."

"Y-your joking. H-he's not my father." Naruto had tears running down his face. All his life, Naruto wanted to know who his parents were and he was finally finding out, only to find out his father was the one who put the fox in his gut.

"He chose you to contain the Kyuubi. He was an honorable person and would not subject another child to the same fate. He chose you because he knew that you can do it, I know that you can do it. You are the only person who can handle this burden… but, you are not alone, you have me, Ino and I'm sure that there are others too. We will all help you through this."

After telling his friends about the Kyuubi, Naruto knew that Hiruzen was right. He had friends he could rely on, they were there for him in his saddest moment and they would be the reason he would get strong. He would fight to protect his precious people, if he had anything to say about it, then he would become the strongest ninja to ever live.

Hiruzen could see that his student understood what he was saying, Naruto would train harder than ever and the Hokage would make him a force to be reckoned with. "We will be increasing the difficulty of your training from here on out but, first I must ask. What are your thoughts on becoming Hokage, now that you know of your burden?"

Naruto sighed, he was waiting for Jiji to ask this question, "Maybe someday I will try to become the Hokage but, first… I need to find my place in the village. A lot of people still hate me and I want to focus more on my and Ino's training. My new goal is to become as powerful as I can to protect my precious people. I hope you're not upset Jiji, I know you supported my dream of being Hokage." The Sandaime originally started training the blonde because of his dream but, that wasn't his dream any more. At least not right now.

"I'm not upset Naruto-kun if anything, I'm prouder of your decision than I was before. Even after learning of two horrible truths, you are not beaten and broken. Instead you have bounced back and you have found a worthy pursuit. Nobody else could have handled this the way that you have, you are stronger than even me in that regard." Hiruzen said, he was proud of the boy before him. 'Your future will be bright, my boy. Never lose your light Naruto.'

The blonde boy couldn't stop his eye's from widening after hearing his Jiji's praises. "Thanks, Jiji, I'll make you proud. I'm going to go home now cause I'm really tired, I kinda stayed up all night fighting my Iwa bunshin (Rock clones). Just so you know, Ino and her family know about our training and her dad should be coming here tomorrow to talk to you. Oh, and Ino, Shikamaru and Shino know about the Kyuubi too."

"Okay Naruto, I'll talk to Inoichi and your friends tomorrow to make sure that they understand not to tell other people. You get home, tomorrow I might stop by and watch you and Ino train." The Sandaime stood up and walked Naruto to the door, "Now you have a good night, Naruto." He hugged his surrogate grandson.

"Bye Jiji." Naruto left the office.

Meanwhile

Sasuke couldn't sleep, he just laid in bed and pondered over the information that he just received in his head. He didn't understand it but, he was grateful. A memory just popped up in his head of some random boy with the Uchiha crest on his back and goggles on his face learning how to tree climb and also practicing different techniques with Shurikenjutsu. Sasuke didn't know how he got these visions however he was grateful because he could use them to get stronger.

"I will get stronger and then I'm coming for you Itachi." Sasuke continued to play the visions in his head until he fell asleep with a smile on his face.

End chapter

AN: And here is another chapter finished. This one is a little smaller than the last two but, I have a couple days off in a row for once so I should hopefully be able to update really soon. The next chapter will go into a time skip and the story will really get started. Anyways I'll see you all next time. Spirals out.


	5. The genin exam

AN: Alright ladies and gentlemen, here is the next chapter of the story. I have to say that I appreciate everyone who has taken the time to read and also to everyone who has reviewed as well. This chapter is a little bit longer than all of the previous ones. To some of the reviewers:

Tellijo: Thanks for bringing that to my attention, I caught it after posting it and I plan on going back and editing that out. Naruto didn't really ask a lot about his parents and that's because he was to shocked about the revelations he just learned about and needed to clear his head. In one of the upcoming chapters I will have a part dedicated to him learning about his parents.

Antex-The Legendary Zoroark: I can't just give away Tobi's plans, that would ruin all of the fun.

Disclaimer: Do I really have to say this every time? It takes a lot of effort to think up something different to type every time I do a disclaimer…. Fine I'll do it anyway, I'm not an owner of Naruto.

Answers Of The Heart

Years later

Punch, kick, side-step, round house kick. The blonde-haired girl managed kick away her opponent and create some distance, creating an opening.

The girl sped through the handsigns for her newest jutsu "Raiton: Sandaboruto (Lightning style: Thunderbolt)" The girl extended both arms as lightning condensed in her palms, with a thrust of her arms she discharged a wave of electricity at her opponent, trying to end the fight. The wave of electricity smashed into him only for him to crumble away into rocks and stone.

'Where is he?' The blonde-haired girl looked around for her other opponent. She couldn't see him at all in the clearing that they use for training. Suddenly her eyes widened, she knew where he would attack from. The girl jumped back and palmed two kunai, waiting for something to happen.

Two hands shot up from the ground and tried to grab onto her feet. With quick reflexes, she guided lightning chakra into her two kunai and thrust them down into the ground. When the hands let go of her legs and turned back into rock, she knew that she had killed her target.

"Nice job Ino-chan, you're getting a lot better with Raiton manipulation. Let's go get some ramen, my treat." Naruto said as he jumped down from the tree he was watching in. Naruto decided that today was a good day to test her progress with her affinity so, he had her fight a couple of his Iwa bunshin (rock clones) with only taijutsu and her affinity.

"Aw but we got ramen last time" The girl whined, "I think it's my turn to pick."

"But I'm paying."

"Naruto, if you know what's good for you than you will let me pick." Ino gave him a massive glare and emphasized putting her hands on her hips.

The only thing the blond boy could do when receiving that glare was let her have her way. Last time he said no to her like this, she snuck into his apartment and stole all of his orange track suits and lit them on fire. He only assumed that she would do worse next time.

Sigh, "Okay… Where do you want to go?" The Uzumaki said to his apparent superior.

"Let's see," Ino said with a happy tone, "You're going to take me to that Bbq place, the one where you freaked out cause I ordered you a salad while you were in the bath room."

"Ugh don't remind me of that, it was bad enough that I almost dropped my Henge (transformation) when that happened." Naruto had taken to using the Henge no jutsu whenever he went shopping or eating anywhere other than Ichiraku's to avoid all of the sneers and mean words. It made Ino upset that he had to use it whenever he went out but, she didn't want to be stuck eating Ichiraku ramen all the time with her fellow blonde.

"Alright, come on foxy-boy," Ino hooked her arm with Naruto's earning a blush from the boy, "take me to lunch." A couple weeks after learning about the Kyuubi, Ino had taken to calling her friend foxy-boy as a way to mess with him and for whatever reason, the nickname had just stuck.

As the two friends walked to the restaurant, they engaged in some light conversation. "So, are you excited to graduate from the academy?" Ino asked.

"Hell yeah! I'm on the fast track to being the greatest ninja ever, nobody can stop me." The Uzumaki yelled out, earning a couple weird looks from people passing by and a giggle from his fellow blonde.

Sigh, "I can't believe how fast the academy went by, we only have a week left until graduation." Ino pondered out loud. "Do you think we will be on the same team?"

"No idea, we can go talk to Jiji after we eat. I have to go see him anyway to make sure I can still pass without being able to do the Bunshin no jutsu (clone jutsu)." Even after training under the Hokage for five years, he still didn't have the control to make a Bunshin. He knew he had a lot of chakra, he just didn't know how much.

"Okay" The blonde-haired girl said back.

After eating their lunch, the two blondes found themselves outside of the Hokage tower and decided to drop in. They walked in and asked the secretary if they could speak to the Hokage.

"Give me a minute, I'll go see if he is available." The secretary stood up and walked around a corner and out of sight.

A minute or two later she returned and sat down, "Sandaime-sama will see you now."

"Thank you." The two blondes said in unison.

After reaching the office, Naruto opened the door and let Ino in first.

"Thank you, Naruto. You're such a gentleman." Ino said, causing Naruto to blush.

"Hi Jiji/ Hokage-sama" The two said at the same time before glaring at each other.

The old man laughed at their antics. "Naruto-kun, Ino-chan, what can I do for you?"

"We just had some questions about our graduation that's coming up." Naruto answered first.

"I see, regarding what?"

"Well, we have to be able to perform the bunshin in order to graduate but, as you know already, I can't perform it because I have too much chakra. Is that going to get me disqualified?"

Hiruzen could see the worry on both kid's faces, technically yes, he would fail. He did however, know a different kind of cloning technique. Hiruzen didn't want him to use it though because then it would let others know that he was learning Doton (earth style) techniques from somewhere.

"I would tell you that you can use your Iwa bunshin but, I don't want others to know that you have been training in nature manipulation yet. I will teach you a different kind of clone technique that you can use instead. We will begin learning it tomorrow."

"Okay Jiji." He could accept that kind of answer from his sensei.

"Did you have other questions for me?"

"Yeah, Ino had one." Said girl jabbed him with an elbow for making her ask the question.

"I was wondering about team placements Hokage-sama." The girl responded nervously.

"And what if I'm not going to tell you about team placements?" Hiruzen knew why they asked, they wanted to be on a team together.

"Aww, come on Jiji. Please tell us, I'll do anything!"

"You'll do anything?" Naruto suddenly shivered when his sensei smirked, "Except for teaching you the Oiroke no jutsu (sexy jutsu) you ero-jiji." Hiruzen frowned 'How did he know? Best to play it off.'

"So, you wanted to know what I chose for the teams?" He sighed in relief when that effectively caught their attention, "To be honest, I am having trouble on deciding what the teams will be."

"How come?" Ino asked

"Because of Naruto training you for the past couple of years. You have the best grades out of everyone in the class and officially, you have the second best practical skills right behind Uchiha Sasuke. Traditionally, the best in the class is teamed up with the worst in the class and the second best. That would mean that the two of you would be paired up with Sasuke."

"Then just pair us together Jiji!" Naruto didn't understand the problem if things worked out just like that.

"The problem is that I have already told Ino's, Shikamaru's and Choji's fathers that I would place them together to create the next generation of the Ino-shika-cho formation. The only way I can put the two of you on a team together is if I convince the three of them that it would be better off to place you two together and that the both of you already have amazing team work and hope that they can agree to the change."

"Who would Naruto be paired with if we aren't on a team together?" Ino asked

"Naruto would be placed with Uchiha Sasuke and Haruno Sakura."

"Why Sakura, she would make Naruto miserable!?" Ino couldn't keep the anger out of her voice.

The old man knew about that already and so it only made it harder to say, "Because behind you, she has the best grades academically."

"Oh" Both blondes said at the same time. Ino thought about it for a little, "I guess that just means that we will have to convince daddy and his drinking friends."

"Very well, I will have you come back here tomorrow at the same time to resolve this matter." The Sandaime said.

"Thanks Jiji, we will see you tomorrow then." "Bye Hokage-sama." The blondes left the office.

With business taken care of, the best friends hugged and said goodbye before splitting up for the night. Each of them was thinking of ways to convince the three fathers, they both thought that they could convince Ino's dad because Naruto had gotten close to the family. They had no idea about the other two because they didn't know them all that well personally.

With Ino

Ino got home and ate some of the food that was left for her before she went upstairs to get ready for bed. She walked in her room which was colored in different shades of purple and white and she plopped down on her bed. 'I hope we can be on the same team. Shikamaru and Choji are cool and all but, I would rather be on a team with Naruto-kun. What can we use to our advantage? I mean, there is the fact that we have been training together for almost five years and our team work is amazing. Could we show them a demonstration? Maybe not, we don't mind daddy seeing our training but, we want to keep our skills secret from others.'

Ino was having a tough time coming up with reasons. 'What else… what else… Oh I know! Naruto is a jinchuriki, putting him on a team with two people that don't like him could cause him to pull on the fox's chakra.' Ino knew that Naruto would never pull on its chakra for that reason but, they didn't need to know that.

Ino spent the rest of the night thinking of ways to convince the men to allow her to be on Naruto's team and eventually fell asleep.

Next day

Naruto and Ino tried their best to wait patiently for the end of class. They talked about the points they would use to convince the trio that they should be on a team together. Naruto managed to stick a smoke bomb in one of the pockets on Mizuki's vest and set it off when the teachers went to the teachers' lounge for lunch. Shikamaru slept and Choji ate. Shino did whatever it is he normally does and Sakura yelled at Naruto a couple of times only for Ino to yell back at her. All in all, it was a normal day of class.

"Alright class, that's it for today. Everyone make sure to practice for the exams on Friday and enjoy the rest of your day." Iruka said to his students.

Everyone shuffled out of the room to carry on with the rest of the day. The two blonds went home before they met up in front of the Hokage tower. "Okay, this is it. If we want to be on a team together than we have to be really convincing. We got this." Ino knew that they could do it, she didn't want to see her best friend get stuck with the Uchiha and his fan girl.

They walked into the building and were led to the Hokage's office by the secretary who was already informed that they would be coming. The duo walked in to see the hokage and Inoichi as well as a rather big man who looked like an older Choji and a scarred pineapple head who Naruto assumed was Shikamaru's dad.

"Welcome Naruto, Ino. I have already explained that the two of you would like to be on a team together and that you have trained together for a few years now." The two nodded, happy that they didn't have to explain everything.

"Yes, we would like for you to allow us to be on a team together, we've been working together for a while now and we have our teamwork down really well. I think it would be better to keep us together but to also keep Sasuke and Sakura on separate teams." Ino took a breath, she was nervous how this could turn out.

"And why would you propose that you and Naruto should be together and not Sasuke and Sakura?" Shikaku asked the two teens.

"Because" Naruto started, "Sakura is a complete fan girl when it comes to Sasuke, she doesn't take her training seriously around him. We have both noticed that she has really good chakra control and she doesn't even practice it at all." Naruto put his point across and knew that Ino would take over

"Adding on to what Naruto said, with the kind of control she has, she could be good at medical ninjutsu or genjutsu. Instead she only focuses on her crush. If she was on a different team than her training would be much more productive because she would actually do it and not have him to distract her."

"And would you get distracted by being on that team?" Inoichi asked his daughter with a grin on his face.

"Of course not, Sasuke is a stuck-up prick!" Ino crossed her arms and glared at her dad, "Besides, I like Naruto." The four adults laughed when Naruto said, "Thanks Ino, you're the best friend ever!"

'I hope you know that you picked a moron Ino-chan, no offense Naruto.' Hiruzen thought to himself.

"Right," Ino's eye twitched, "But in all seriousness, Naruto and I are focused on our training. You wouldn't have to worry about me being a fan girl."

Naruto was confused, "Who would you be a fan girl for?" Everyone face faulted at his question, how could the boy be so clueless

"Are you guys okay?" The clueless blond asked everyone

'Troublesome blondes'

'You sure know how to pick them Ino, your mother would be proud'

'Why did I want this kid to replace me as Hokage again?'

'Poor Yamanaka clan'

'Must not punch him.'

These were some of the thoughts that were floating around in the heads of the people in the room.

"All in favor of putting Ino on his team so she can beat some sense into him, raise your hand." Hands shot up all across the room. It was an undisputed agreement that they would be on the same team.

Naruto pulled his fellow blonde into a hug and started to jump up and down, "Yay we did it! You hear that Ino-chan, we can be together!" The girl blushed at his statement as the four men laughed at their antics.

"Let's go celebrate!" Naruto dragged Ino out of the office to go eat ramen for their victory.

Ichiraku's Ramen

The two blondes just entered the stand and sat down. Both of them had big smiles on their faces after finding out that they would be on the same team.

"Say old man, can we get some bowls of ramen going?"

"Of course, Naruto. It'll be just a moment, would you like the usual?" The old cook asked his favorite customer.

The blonde yelled out, "You know it dattebayo!" Causing Ino and the cook to laugh.

"And what about for you Ino?"

"I'll get the same as Naruto, smaller portion though." The girl responded before she realized, "hey, where is Ayame?"

"I let her have the day off to relax, she wasn't feeling well."

"Oh, I hope she feels better soon." Ino responded back.

"She will be fine, she's a tough girl." Teuchi said before dropping off the bowls of ramen in front of the two hungry blonds, "Enjoy your food, first bowls on the house."

"Yatta!" Yelled a certain hyperactive blonde as he dug into his food.

They both ended up staying for a little while and just talked about their hopes and expectations for after they graduate, among other things. After a couple helpings of ramen, Naruto walked Ino back to her house before going home himself.

The next day

After a long day of review at the academy, Naruto finally found himself sitting in front of his Jiji in their training spot. It was time for him to learn his newest jutsu.

"Alright Naruto, the jutsu I am going to be teaching you can be quite dangerous. So dangerous in fact that it is a forbidden technique. Do you have any questions?" The old teacher told his student

"Why is it so dangerous if it is a clone technique?" Naruto asked, curious to find out.

"As you already know, clone techniques like your Iwa bunshin (rock clone) use rock to form the body of the jutsu. The same goes with all of the elemental bunshin jutsu. The jutsu that you will be learning doesn't use a material to form the bunshin, it uses pure chakra." Naruto nodded at the explanation, "The Kage bunshin no jutsu (Shadow clone jutsu) splits your chakra in half and uses that chakra to create form. When you try the jutsu, I want you to focus on taking the chakra and forming it in another version of you. It is very similar to the Shuriken Kage bunshin (Shuriken shadow clone) but it requires more chakra and concentration."

Hiruzen placed his index and middle fingers in a cross shape before saying, "This is the handsign for the jutsu, start practicing it."

Naruto sat in the clearing and practiced his new jutsu as Hiruzen sat under the shade of a tree and watched. He wanted to see how long it would take for the blonde to figure out how to use the technique. Hiruzen wanted to have him create as many clones as he can without passing out to finally see how much chakra he has in him. To the Sandaime's astonishment, his student managed to perform the jutsu and create three kage bunshin within the hour. The blonde continued using the jutsu until he felt comfortable with it. "Impressive Naruto-kun, now I want you to put as much chakra as you can into the jutsu and make as many kage bunshin as you can."

The blonde nodded before closing his eye's and focusing. Suddenly, his chakra flared up to incredible levels and his eyes shot open, "Kage bunshin no jutsu!"

Hiruzen's eyes widened in shock, he didn't have an exact number but, the clone count was well over a thousand. 'He has more chakra than I did in my prime. No wonder he can't perform a basic bunshin. With that much chakra and a little more control over it then he should be able to perform almost any ninjutsu that I can teach him. Minato, Kushina, you would be proud of your son, he is going to be an exceptional shinobi.'

"Hey… Jiji, I did it… shouldn't we leave though? Any ninja with… sensory skills are bound to have felt that." The blonde panted out after using up almost all of his chakra on that one jutsu.

Hiruzen grinned as he lit his pipe to smoke, "Yes your right. Dispel your clones fifty at a time but keep atleast forty out. I want you to have ten of them sneak around the forest and another ten to hunt them down. The rest of them, should do your chakra control exercises and practice your ninjutsu in the clearing that you and Ino use. After you do that, meet me in my office." The Sandaime said before he disappeared in the forest, not giving the Uzumaki time to ask any questions.

"Why would he want my clones to do that? Oh well, you heard him guys. Start dispelling and I want you guys," Naruto pointed at the clones right in front of him, " to do what Jiji said, now scatter."

Naruto took off to the office as his clones started to disperse. It was weird because he would get different views of the clearing that he was just in whenever his clones disappeared. It didn't make sense.

Ten minutes later, Naruto stepped into the office to be greeted by his sensei, "Have you found out why I wanted your clones to train and hunt each other?"

"No I don-" Naruto cut himself off as he received the memories of one of the clones being chased before being scratched by a kunai on the arm and disappearing, "I-I think I know now. I get the memories of the clones as they die and they will easily die to any kind of damage. Why is a technique like this forbidden? It can be used for intelligence, scouting and even for training."

"The reason this technique is forbidden is because the average genin would die the second that they attempt this jutsu due to the chakra needed for it. The average jonin can only create five clones before they are exhausted and useless in battle, in my prime I could only create about two hundred. I want you to be careful when training with this technique because too many clones disappearing at once can give you bad headaches and if bad enough, cause permanent damage. You are only allowed to train with twenty clones at a time until you get used to it." Hiruzen explained

Naruto had stars in his eyes, "I have more chakra then you did at your strongest? I'm the best! Watch out world, Uzumaki Naruto is going to kick everybody's butts!" He yelled out, causing his sensei to laugh.

"Now that you have clones to help in your training, I want you to focus on only learning taijutsu, let your clones focus on learning and mastering ninjutsu and chakra control. I'm going to make your training harder than ever and we are going to teach you how to use a weapon now that it won't hinder your other skills."

"When will we get my weapon?" Naruto asked as a little bit of drool escaped his mouth. He wanted to learn a weapon like his Jiji's staff so bad.

"We won't focus on that until after you are a genin, I want to get you use to training with kage bunshin first." 

"Alright Jiji, I'll see you later then. I'm going to meet up with Ino." Naruto hugged his Jiji before he started to walk out.

"Wait Naruto. I have one more thing to say, you are not allowed to teach this jutsu to Ino until I think she has enough chakra. Anyways, go have fun with your girlfriend."

Naruto blushed a bright red, "She's not my girlfriend!" He yelled before he left quickly.

Hiruzen laughed, "Ahh so Naruto-kun is in denial, maybe there is hope for him yet. Almost reminds me of Biwako and me when we were younger." The old man frowned when he involuntarily remembered finding her dead after the Kyuubi attack. It still didn't make sense that she was stabbed by what looked like a kunai during the disaster. Hiruzen put his thoughts away for the moment, It still made him sad to think of her death.

Unknown location

The cavern was dark, water dripped down from the cracks in the celling. The place had the stench of death and blood. Suddenly the air distorted to reveal a man in an orange mask with a black cloak.

"Tobi knows you're here." The dark man said in an oddly playful voice.

What looked like a giant venus fly trap slowly grew from the ground and opened to reveal a white and black man that had half of a mouth on his white side. "Why have you called for us Tobi?"

Tobi spoke again but, rather than the light, playful tone, it was dark and ominous, "It is time to put our plan in action. I have done everything I can to help our little project grow, now it is your turn to keep an eye on it. You know what to do." Tobi said before he spiraled away into nothingness.

The odd black and white being sunk into the ground, leaving behind the dead squad of ninja that had previously walked into the hideout.

Day of graduation

"Alright class quiet down." Nobody heard a thing because everyone was chatting excitedly about graduating today.

Iruka's head somehow multiplied in size as he yelled, "Everyone shut up, Mizuki needs your attention to give you the test." That shut everyone up.

"Um… Thanks Iruka," Mizuki looked exasperated, "Now as I was trying to say, the exam to graduate starts now. I will be handing out a test to each of you with fifty questions on it. You have an hour and a half to finish." Mizuki passed out all of the tests face down. "Now flip them over and begin."

Naruto flipped over his paper and did a quick scan over the questions when he noticed that the entire thing was wrong. The day before, Kiba had convinced the blonde to help him steal the answers to the test. So during lunch, Kiba acted as a distraction and gave Naruto an opening to get back into the classroom with no one there and make a copy of the answers sheet.

'I know for a fact that no one caught me, I had kage bunshin watching out for me and Kiba made a really good distraction. I can't believe that he started a food fight by accidently dumping his soup on Sasuke-teme. Maybe it's something else.' Naruto looked over to Kiba and made eye contact. His friend made a thumbs up gesture before going back to the test.

That confused Naruto, wouldn't everyone's tests be changed just in case Naruto had told anyone else what the answers were. His eyes widened as he realized 'It's a genjutsu.'

Naruto made the appropriate hand sign before whispering "Kai" and watched as his test changed to reveal the real questions. Naruto got to work, answering all of the questions as quickly as he could to make up for lost time.

Later

The class was on the final test, each of them would be taken to a separate room where they would be required to perform the three jutsu that the academy teaches. Currently, the teachers were most of the way through the class and had a couple more students to go

"Uchiha Sasuke" Sasuke got up to go perform the jutsu and as he walked into the room, all of his fan girls started to cheer for him.

It was strange, the last Uchiha had gotten arrogant. Okay maybe he always was but, over the past couple years he had gotten more vocal about. During the first year in the academy, he would only respond to others with a grunt. But now, he would actually talk to you except, it was as if he was some kind of god and the person he spoke to was smaller than an ant. Naruto definitely was not looking forward to being on his team.

"Uzumaki Naruto" The blond stood up and walked to the door, as he was walking Ino said good luck to him. He walked into the room to see Iruka and Mizuki sitting behind a desk waiting for him.

"Alright Naruto, we want you to perform three jutsu for us; the kawarimi (replacement), henge (transformation) and the bunshin (clone) start when you're ready." Mizuki explained to the blonde.

"Alright, let's do this" Naruto was nervous, sure he had been training with the Hokage himself for a couple of years now but, this was the moment that he would finally be realized as a shinobi.

"Henge" Naruto turned into a perfect copy of his Jiji.

"Very good Naruto, that is a really convincing henge."

The blonde transformed back into himself and said thanks before he Kawarimied with the chair in the corner of the room.

'Now is the moment he fails, then I can start my plan.' Mizuki grinned at the prospect of Naruto failing the bunshin.

Both sensei were surprised when the blonde formed his fingers into a cross position and said out loud, "Kage bunshin no jutsu."

"What!?" Both men yelled out when they watched a twelve-year-old perform a jutsu that they couldn't even use.

"Y-you pass Naruto." Iruka couldn't believe what he just saw, the hokage had to know how special Naruto was to learn a jutsu like that on his own.

Meanwhile, Mizuki was pissed! He went through so much work for his plan and it all rode on Naruto failing the exam. 'I need a new plan, I can't leave the village anymore.' He glared at Naruto as he left the room, 'I'm going to make that brat pay for not failing, I have to be careful though. If he hid a jutsu as advanced as the kage bunshin from us, what else could he have up his sleeve?' Mizuki decided that he would just keep an eye out for now. He was stuck in this stupid village, he might as well take his time and make the most of it.

With Naruto

Naruto promised Ino that he would wait for her outside of the academy. She wanted him to come over to her house and celebrate their start as ninja. When Naruto was about to step out of the front doors of the academy, he was stopped by Iruka.

"Sorry for stopping you," Iruka said once he caught up to the blonde, "I forgot to tell you while we were in the evaluation room but, I want you to meet up with the class on Monday to find out your genin assignment. I also came to say great job, you really blew my mind with that jutsu." Iruka sighed

"I'm sorry, I haven't really treated you fairly over the years. I want you to know that you are a great kid and even though you pranked us all the time and would skip class a lot, I enjoyed teaching you." It wasn't easy for Iruka but he had slowly been realizing over the years that Naruto wasn't some kind of monster or demon. He was just a kid who had nothing and was shunned all his life. The blonde reminded him of himself.

"Thanks Iruka-sensei." Naruto said back. He knew that the teacher meant what he said, his eyes gave away the sadness that he felt about the way Naruto was treated. "That means a lot, maybe some time we can go get some ramen."

"Maybe I can take you tonight as a treat for graduating." Iruka said.

"Sorry sensei I can't. I'm going over to Ino's house after this to celebrate with her family." The blonde responded back.

"Ah yes, speaking of that, I should go and help Mizuki with the last part of the exam," Iruka turned back around and started walking back to the exam room, "I'll catch you later Naruto, good job." The scared teacher walked back to the room.

Naruto continued walking back outside and proceeded to wait for his best friend. He didn't have to wait long as she came out about five minutes later.

"Hey you passed!" Ino smiled at him as they started walking to her house.

"Of course, I did I'm me after all!" Naruto said back with a grin on his face.

"Oh, is foxy-boy feeling over confident? If I remember correctly, you were the dead last in the class. Or as a couple people like to call you, the dobe." The girl smirked when Naruto sputtered and couldn't come up with a good come back. She laughed when he just settled for crossing his arms and looking away from her.

"For being a prankster, you make it way too easy to mess with." Ino nudged her best friend with an elbow to get him to talk to her.

They continued walking to her house and she was honestly starting to feel bad because Naruto wasn't talking to her at all. Did something she say hurt his feelings?

Right when they got in front of her house she was about to ask him if he was mad. However, when she opened her mouth to speak, he suddenly popped into a cloud of smoke and Naruto appeared behind her out of nowhere and yelled out, scaring her.

When the girl's parents opened the door, and came running out to see who was yelling, they were confused to see a bright red and angry Ino standing over a knocked-out Naruto with a giant lump on his head. 'The stupid kid played another prank on my daughter and got beat up for it… again." Inoichi face palmed because of the stupidity of the blonde boy out cold on the ground.

"Do you two want to start dinner? I'll take him inside and put him on the couch." Inoichi asked as he went to pick up the unconscious kid.

Ikumi beckoned for her daughter to follow her, "Come on Ino, let's go start dinner. We wouldn't want your boyfriend to starve, now would we?" The girl blushed at the implication but, followed her laughing mother into the house anyways.

Meanwhile in the Hokage office

"Kakashi, I'm glad you made it. I wanted to see you about a position I need filled." The Sandaime said to the white haired jonin as he walked into the office.

"Huh, what about Hokage-sama?" Kakashi said in his lazy tone as he put away his perverted book.

"As I'm sure you know, the new genin have graduated their exams today and will now need jonin to teach them. I wish for you to take a particular team."

Kakashi's eye widened at the prospect, he didn't think he was the best candidate for the job. "Who are you wanting me to teach?"

Hiruzen didn't respond instead, he set a folder on his desk and pushed it towards the jonin, gesturing for him to look in it.

Kakashi took the folder and opened it up, upon reading the names of the students he would take, his one eye widened once again, "Quite the team that you want me to watch over. Considering that Uchiha Sasuke is on my team, you want me to teach him how to use the Sharingan."

"When he unlocks it I would like you to teach him how it works but, that isn't the reason your on that team," When Hiruzen received a confused look, he decided to continue, "I'm sure the counsel would like you to only focus on him but, I put you on that team more for Naruto than anyone else. What I am going to tell you stays between you me and him, do you understand?" The Sandaime asked.

The man nodded in affirmative, giving Hiruzen his full attention.

"I have been secretly training Naruto for about five years, he knows about the Kyuubi and his parents. I felt that you would be the best one to be his sensei because you would be able to answer some of his questions better than I would. I must also let you know that Naruto has also been secretly training Ino as well so I would expect them to be a little better than your average genin. I need you to train the three equally and try to get to know them, Naruto needs more people in his life that he can trust."

Kakashi was shocked, Naruto knew about his parents and not only that but, the Hokage was sacrificing a lot by training the blonde. It was a lot to take in at once but, the jonin was not prepared to fail as the sensei of this team. He would help turn Naruto into a shinobi that Minato-sensei would be proud of.

"Would that be everything Hokage-sama?"

"Yes Kakashi, the only other piece of information I have for you is that team meet up is on Monday at the academy. Other than that, you are free to go." The old man dismissed the copy ninja.

End chapter


End file.
